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Food, Clothing and Shelter. All capital letter nouns when uses in tandem.

Those are the three things we always presume make up the fundamental needs of a human existence.

They are the most basic things we need to survive in our world. But are they really?

Food, most certainly, is an essential of life (and I include water in that usage) but neither clothing nor shelter is. One could argue counter to that statement, but sit yourself under a banana tree in a tropical climate and you realize that neither is a precondition of life.

Take it one step further: If society condoned such behavior, don’t you think that most would gladly shed their clothes in order to avoid adding to the oppressive heat and humidity so characteristic of tropical climes?

In other words, we’ve already bid up what it means to “survive.”

So while we’re at it, I’d like to throw in two other essentials of life: Transportation and Communication.

At first those may not seem so primary. But contemplate how much we spend on those two things (in terms of both time and money) and it’s clear that these are no longer discretionary budget items.

Go to most developing nations and you’ll see that transportation by way of informal modes and communication via cell phones and texting are’t frills – they’re everywhere.

Food, Clothing, Shelter, Transportation and Communication therefore seems to me to be a more realistic and well-rounded definition of the essentials of life. Or at the vey least, the esentials of civilization.

To move through and to communicate with is to live and participate in society. It is to exist.