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While growing, I learned that human have 3 basic needs: meal, cloth and a house. If we look at the history, the basic needs sound reasonable. Nowadays, these basic needs has been transformed into desire of luxury and lavishness for human society, irrespective of their purchasing power. While searching for temporal joy and artificial peace, we, human badly ruined the nature including species, water resource and earth’s atmosphere. The question is, what if human, one day achieve all the luxury but, left with unclean air to breathe and dirty water to drink, what cost can be paid for making these resources useful. Isn’t seems that in those circumstances, the definition of basic need will change to clean water and pure air.

Sonu Kumar
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  • In Western philosophy, a way to approach this may be an investigation of the problem of human Will: for instance the contrast between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on one side, and T. Adorno-M. Horkheimer and late Heidegger on the other side. – Gordon Apr 04 '18 at 13:35
  • The three basic needs: meal, cloth and a house have a common denominator: survival. When clean water and pure air will become ncessary for survival, they will become "basic needs" also. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Apr 04 '18 at 14:39
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA, one might argue that clean water already is a part of meal. Moreover pure air also already is needed for survival, but it isn't in short supply and even is free. – rus9384 Apr 05 '18 at 22:00
  • How is this related to philosophy? This is just a general statement and overly broad, and leading, request for opinions. – CriglCragl Apr 06 '18 at 00:08
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    You needn't ask 'what if' since we are already in this position. Clean water and air are going to be the new luxuries. –  Apr 06 '18 at 12:09
  • I see the title being "what is worth" living like this, but sense that the sub-context isn't really asking "what is it worth" but rather "why do we not change the situation", which leads to the assumption that the situation is bad; which is essentially leading to opinion-based answers, hence my vote to close the question, as much as I'd like to answer it. Rephrase the question towards a bit more objectivity-asking, and maybe you'll get proper answers. – Yechiam Weiss Jul 05 '18 at 20:08
  • Why do you insist on blaming "luxury and lavishness" for ruining nature? Surely, increasing the human population from 2 billion to around 7 billion in less than a hundred years has caused far more damage to the planet than people simply wanting to enjoy the fruits of their labor and achieve all they possibly can in the short time-frame they are alive. – Dunk Jul 06 '18 at 19:42

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The problem you describe is more complex. In any society, if 5% live a life of luxury, and 95% lead a simple life, the environment stays in balance. It's just that everyone would prefer to be within those 5% rather than in the 95%.

tkruse
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