## // Critique of Needs: What We Need – and Who Actually Decides

What people really need seems, at first glance, a simple question. In fact, it is one of the most political questions of all.

In everyday life, we like to distinguish between "natural" needs and "artificial" needs. The natural ones, so the idea, come from within us. The artificial ones are generated externally. Through advertising. Through consumption. Through false promises.

This distinction sounds plausible. But it does not stand up to closer scrutiny.

Even with hunger, it becomes clear: what a person can eat without disgust depends on where and how they grew up. Insects, offal, raw meat, fermented fish – what is a delicacy in one culture triggers a gag reflex in another. Even this seemingly most elementary drive is thus socially shaped. There is no pure, unadulterated "human nature" that we can appeal to.

#### Why "Naturalness" Is Dangerous

Those who nevertheless speak of "natural" needs often have a political goal. Usually a restrictive one.

For when it is claimed: "People naturally only need food and shelter, everything else is luxury", this is a preparation for exclusion. Because whoever declares education, culture or free time to be luxury can more easily justify why many people remain excluded from precisely these things. "They don't really need it."

Thus a seemingly harmless statement about human nature becomes a justification for scarcity.

#### Even "Higher" Needs Are Not Innocent

A second common distinction is between superficial and higher needs. Whoever works all day, watches TV on the sofa in the evening and goes shopping at the weekend is considered superficial. Whoever goes to concerts, reads books, is interested in art is considered cultivated.

This distinction is too simplistic. The so-called surface needs are not an expression of weakness of character. But a consequence of exhausting work. Those who function like an "appendage of the machine" need distraction. Just to become capable of working again.

But: even the supposedly higher needs are long since shaped by market logics. Which books are on display in bookshops. Which films are produced. Which art receives attention. All of this follows economic rules. There is no longer any area of "pure" culture beyond the market.

#### The Dilemma

This creates a theoretical dilemma. A critique of needs cannot simply say: "These needs are right, those are wrong." That would be authoritarian. Someone would presume to judge the needs of others from the outside.

At the same time, it cannot pretend that all needs are equally good. For under the conditions of today's society, domination migrates into people themselves. We often desire exactly what keeps us docile.

#### What an Answer Could Look Like

The way out lies not in moral judgements. But in a different question: Which needs today contribute to maintaining domination? And which needs point beyond it?

It is important here: needs are not set in stone. That today we constantly desire the same things – the newest model, faster consumption – is not due to a fixed human nature. But to a production system that depends on repetition.

A different economy would produce different needs. An economy that is not oriented towards profit. But towards what people actually need. Starting with the most urgent things: the end of hunger, poverty, avoidable suffering.

*Key reference: Theodor W. Adorno, "Thesen über Bedürfnis" (1942)*

## // Everyday Life Is Not Banal – It Is Political

How we get up in the morning. What we eat. How we get to work. What we do in the evening. This seems like purely private matters. But it is not. In everyday life, how our society functions condenses. Those who dismiss everyday life as banal overlook: it is precisely there that relations unfold their greatest effect.

Capitalism no longer only shapes work. It reaches into every corner of life. Leisure time, which was once thought of as the counterpart to work, has become consumption time. Apartments are no longer primarily places to live. But investment objects. Even our relationships – romantic and friendly – are increasingly thought of according to market logics. What does this do for me? Is this relationship worthwhile?

#### Alienation – an Old Word, a Contemporary Feeling

We live in rhythms that are actually alien to us. We do things because they are demanded. Not because they suit us. The old philosophical word for this is *alienation*. The feeling of being a guest in one's own life.

But precisely therein lies an opportunity. If alienation is experienced in everyday life, it can only be overcome there. No one comes through the door with the finished concept of a "better society". Change begins in the small spaces and times we reclaim. When we start to not just work through our days. But to shape them.

#### What This Means for a Caring City

Care takes place in everyday life. It needs spaces. Times. Social conditions. A care that no one has time for cannot succeed. A friendship that only finds space between two appointments remains superficial. Caring for a sick child requires that someone can also take time off.

When urban space is organised solely according to economic usability. When apartments are too small to invite guests. When neighbourhoods become so anonymous that no one rings the bell anymore. Then the ground on which care relationships can grow is missing.

The question is therefore: how would our neighbourhoods have to look? Our daily routines? Our shared places? So that care is not a private matter. And also no luxury for those who can afford the time. But a natural dimension of city life.

*Key reference: Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne (1958)*