by rbnstr

Created on: November 10, 2010

Survival in life has three basic necessities:  Food, shelter and clothing.  With all three it would be sufficient to sustain life and existence.  We need to make that clear.  Living life since people started to advance in education, health concerns, entertainment and communication needs, travel and transport, grooming and others, necessities now depend on different standards of living.

In remote or far flung areas many necessities are just the basic ones.  Those areas, no matter how small their community, need governance but many do not get it.  Many of them do not have roads and their means of transportation are also basic animals.  Mountainous and heavily forested remote areas might not even have or could not use animals as transportation.  Medical attention hardly reaches those areas and would be lucky to be a beneficiary of medical missions at least once a year.  Fortunate are those that are along riversides because they can use boats or rafts as a means of transportation.

Several decades ago, a car was a thing considered as a luxury; now it is considered as a necessity by most people.  Landline telephones, telegrams and postal mail are still a necessity.  However, most of the time, they serve only as fallback facilities when cellular phone and internet are not available.  Some necessities become only as such depending on geographical location, availability of equipments and the energy to operate them.

Heavily populated or highly urban areas will have more necessities.  These would be like government, police presence, life and medical insurance, medical/hospital services, secure employment or income, different media for communication and information, and higher education.  Different modes of transportation, both private and public, are a real necessity.  It is almost impossible to deliver or secure the other necessities without them.  Transportation, on the other hand, will necessitate the availability of good road network, railways, airports, and, harbors for others.

Necessities are those that we cannot live or survive with.  They are dependent on affordability and availability for those who consider the urgency of having them.  A normal lifestyle should be led as how one can afford it.  Many good movies about being stranded in an unpopulated island show what is really needed to survive.  They subsist only on what they can afford and what is available!  Sam Walton, the owner of Walmart, can have a lifestyle like most of the rich and famous who say it is a necessity for them!  Mr. Walton still drives a 1979 pick-up truck and still goes to a regular barber.  People who have a lavish lifestyle try to justify a necessity.  Determining a necessity is to know that it is a must to continue living.  Priorities to be considered in life should start from the top for most urgent going down to the last as most negligible

Learn more about this author, rbnstr.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.