“Where the old economy relied on mass production to meet universal needs, the new economy demands customized innovation to satisfy an endless range of wants and whims.”

He is describing the same wants and needs I was addressing in my comments to you on Maslow’s hierarchy. What I was trying to suggest, as he explains, we are now a society of wants; as such we could label Maslow’s hierarchy a hierarchy of wants instead of needs.

I am not a trained philosopher, which could be an advantage, so I am neither an existentialist nor essentialist. In fact, I didn’t really know the difference until I read the Ogilvy’s article.

To me want and need only defines a potential. Want has all it needs and then some so I call it a negative potential. Need is lacking something so I call it a positive potential. This corresponds to a positive and negative charge in physics and has many of the same attributes as the movement of electrons.

But it sounds to me, with your use of the words existentialism, truth, faith, and belief, that what you are having trouble with are the terms real and reality. The future is real; reality (according to Howard Bloom in his book Globe Brain) is a mass hallucination. Essentially, in a society the resources go towards those elements that support the reality and away from those that don’t. The future of a society is real and exists. The logic of a society depends on wither it is a society of want or need. The ethics of the society is its worth.

Perhaps it would be accurate to say: at the local level the elements of a society are very existential; on the national or global level or scale it become more essential.

Essentially, on a global scale, we are consuming 70% of the world’s savings (and consuming a big chunk of that on war), which are going to have some real and predictable consequences; on a local level, if reality supports it, we are a people who believe in the Bill of Rights and the American Constitution. The one may or may not support the other.