What Do You Need? How Will You Attain It?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, revisited

Perhaps you’ve heard of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. He makes a convincing argument that ‘higher level’ needs cannot be met until ‘lower level’ needs are met first. For instance, if you are struggling for survival, all your thoughts and actions are focused on survival.  People facing starvation are not likely to engage energetically in questions concerning gender dysphoria.  But as more and more of us can take survival for granted, our thoughts can go in different directions.   Why do they go in the directions they do?  I’ve always been interested, not just in what we think and do, but WHY we think and do. In a subsistence society, the ‘why’ is obvious; to survive. But what about in today’s modern society?

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs examines some of this. There are five levels (levels are listed here with primary need first, working downwards to secondary needs):

 physiological,

safety,

love,

esteem,

and self-actualization.

 Maslow did not claim that each level of the hierarchy was distinct from the others, but that attaining the higher levels had at least some dependence on first achieving the lower levels.

You might dispute this, but contemplate living in a situation where you were desperate for food.  Would you seek love for its own sake, or would you love the one who fed you, regardless?   After love, we can focus on esteem, and ultimately, when all those other needs are met, at the top of the pyramid, we can concentrate on self-actualization. 

And what, exactly, is self-actualization?  Well, it isn’t exactly anything, but it is some manifestation of the desire to, as they say in the army, be all that you can be.  Clearly, that means different things to different people.

Not so very long ago, nearly all human lives were dedicated to basic survival. Human activity largely involved bringing in a crop sufficient enough to tide them over to next year’s harvest. Their lives literally depended on it.  There were seasons for hunting, too.  Animal migrations presented opportunities for hunting and laying in enough meat to last until the next hunt. And if you wanted a place to live, build it.  Nobody was going to build it for you.

But now we can take survival and safety (and, presumably, love) for granted, and shoot straight up to the top of Maslow’s needs. We can go straight for the self-actualization. But what if we’ve got things a little backwards in that regard? We can live our lives on auto-pilot, never fearing for anything concerning our basic needs.  How satisfying is that?  Not very, I don’t think.  There is no sense of accomplishment in eating food that somebody else provided, in living in a home that somebody else provided.

Imagine instead, living a life in which survival is not assured.  But with effort and planning, survival is at least likely. Think then, about the harvest celebrations that used to be commonplace.  They were celebrating that their survival was assured for another year, thanks to their direct efforts.  I’d say that’s worth celebrating!  Could there be any more rewarding sense of self-actualization than that? What is our equivalent to that today?  There is nothing, that I know of.

My point is, these ‘uncivilized’ people were meeting all five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy, just in surviving. The two highest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy are esteem and self-actualization.  Well, how better to meet them than to successfully bring in a crop that assures everyone’s survival?

What is the equivalent of that today?  Again, nothing that I know of.  And so, we must make stuff up. We must find dire need, invent it if we have to, so that we can reach levels four and five, esteem and self-actualization.

Yes, I am vastly oversimplifying, but I think I’m on the right track. In the relatively recent past, the aristocracy, the idle rich who could indulge in such things, could get their esteem and fulfillment by studying various schools, such as philosophy and religion.  You know, Plato, Socrates and such.  Philosophy for its own sake. 

But today’s philosophy concentrates on privilege, social justice, and the evils of capitalism. Such philosophy has created a strange juxtaposition of victim and victimizer. There is esteem, I guess, in feeling victimized, as well as feeling like the victimizer. Either way, you are part of something, something that feels significant, fulfilling, in an odd way. Also odd is that it takes two.  The victims and victimizers get together in some strange way to blame and be blamed and apologize and be apologized to.  And yet, they are not on two sides, they are on the same side. Their commonality is in this philosophical dance of guilt.  It takes two to tango, as they say.

But these two sides, these two sets of dancers, reserve their real angst for those of us who look on, perplexed. These dancers can’t fathom the sense of individuality of those of us who take neither the blame nor the credit for what our ancestors have done or have had done to them. We see every life, especially in a free society, as an individual life, to be lived however that individual cares to live it.

For myself, at least, my sense of esteem must include a certain level of self-sufficiency in all five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. How good should I feel about myself, if I am living off of someone else’s efforts? So, my self-actualization consists largely of seeing to the lower levels, seeing to physical need, and safety (financial security in this case, as well as physical safety).  I created my own business and met the needs of customers, none of whom had to do business with me.  I had to offer something such that they would WANT to do business with me.  In return for doing what they needed to have done, they paid me.  What a radical concept!

And in doing this, I personally saw to all of my hierarchy of needs.  Oops, did I leave out love? Love can be fulfilling and enriching, or it can be painful and debilitating.  It depends on the people involved.  I’ve tried to make sure that I represent the positive side of love, and I think I’ve done well at that.

Meanwhile, back at the dance, the pas de deux of the social justice set is an elaborate ritual of make believe. But I guess it’s satisfying to them. They imagine a past in America, in which all blacks were victims, and all whites were oppressors, which doesn’t even resemble the truth. And so, they imagine that all blacks today are descendants of slaves, and all whites are descendants of slave owners, which is total bullshit. But it makes for a great dance, and somehow meets their need for esteem.  And for self-actualization.

Both of the parties to this, rather than keep it among themselves, claim mutual victimhood from those of us who want none of it. In other words, both the victims and the victimizers in this sick waltz expect full participation. Those of us who scoff at them, rather than join in, are reviled as haters, bigots, racists, right-wing extremists, and the classic, ‘threats to democracy’.

Individualism wants no part in this dance, in this grand ball, in the grand ballroom of self-absorbed self-flagellation. We’d be willing to leave them to themselves, but they will not leave us to ourselves. We are expected to join in with them, and if we do not voluntarily join, they will attempt to force us to.  But why? Why would they care so much about us, one way or the other?  To some extent, they didn’t, back when the media was controlled by major media corporations. They were the only ones who could call the tune. In that way, they could ignore us, pretend we didn’t exist, or at least didn’t matter. (I’ve found that Orwell’s “1984” considers this)

You could either dance to their music, of try to find a place to sit it out. But now we individualists are calling our own tunes, and we are being heard. We are drowning out the traditional music of abject conformity.  And the conformists are pissed. We point out their constant dischords, the missteps, and that they are merely dancing, accomplishing nothing. They don’t like that.  And rather than consider what we say, they seek to shut us up.

So, I guess we’re doing them a favor. In a perverted way, we are providing them with both esteem and self-actualization.  They get to proclaim that they are better than us (artificial esteem), and to persecute us (very real self-actualization).

Philosophers and such have always had the basic needs of the hierarchy provided to them by the rest of us. A philosopher isn’t much of a philosopher, if he doesn’t realize this and respect his providers for doing it.  But today’s philosophers, the ‘political scientists’,  ‘community activists’, ‘black/women’s/gay studies majors’ are all trying to make absolute claim to the upper tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy, while ignoring that there is a hierarchy. They put themselves at the top, and never wonder who it is that is holding them up, providing for the basic needs that they conveniently take for granted.  We owe them no consideration whatsoever, just as they have shown us none.

Maslow biography

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