Our needs are manifestation of our instincts, aren't they?
Needs are facts of reality, which if not fulfilled, result in the death of the organism. Instinct is an automatic form of knowledge that guides action, such that life is the consequence. The instinct is a response developed according to the requirements of staying alive.
Not all forms of knowledge are automatic. Human knowledge is most definitively characterized by the possession of free will. The ability to consciously, purposefully guide one's actions negates any and all hard wired responses residual from the organism's ancestry. Instinct and choice are opposites, and mutually exclusive. An action cannot be forced and chosen, at the same time, and/or in the same respect.
Ask yourself if you could survive without thinking, and if you could think without making decisions. If you had survival instincts, you wouldn't have to.
That's why you leave your hand on a boiling pot when it's burning and also why a mother doesn't instinctively braces her arm across a child sitting in the passenger seat when having to break heavily. It's why we all stare at the sun until it burns our retinas and why we don't eat when we're hungry, don't dress warmer in the cold, don't sleep when our body can't stay awake anymore, etc.
If you think you can survive by rote physical sensations of pain and pleasure, I would like to see that. No concepts. No words. No numbers. No categorization. No logical analysis. No questions. Just what
feels good, and what
feels bad.
The knowledge of how to deal with raw sensation is not provided for human beings. They have to discover it for the first time, or they have to learn it from someone who already knows. In adults, human reflex is based on knowledge learned by choice. Kids are a lot closer to the sensory-perceptual level, but they can't stay there if they want to live to be adults. They still at no point have to learn or have to value what's good for them. If they try to live off their emotions, their physical sensations, and their whims, before you know it there will be entire generations incapable of supporting their own lives, or taking responsibility for their actions.
You don't see that in even the most intelligent animals. It's because even the most sophisticated sensory-perceptual consciousnesses on the planet don't have to think. They can't ____ up. So, they don't. Instinct is an automatic knowledge of survival, and we don't have it.
