“…to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” — Abraham Maslow
“They used to say that if Man was meant to fly, he’d have wings. But he did fly. He discovered he had to.” Captain Kirk, Return to Tomorrow ▶️
Evolution tells us where we come from, but not who we can potentially be. Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs not only chronicles basic human needs, it also explores our potentials. Studying people of great achievements, including Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Mahatma Gandhi, Maslow concluded that we human beings are simultaneously motivated by a host of needs. (Since it’s later revealed that our needs are not necessarily in a hierarchy, as they are commonly referred to, I will just call them Maslow’s needs from now on.)
Maslow’s needs help us answer questions like: what makes us happy and fulfilled? Is it getting rewards and avoiding pain? Why do we voluntarily go through pain and delay gratification sometimes for a greater goal? Why do we get what we want but still remain unsatisfied? Why is it so hard to understand others’ motivations and for others to understand ours? In short, Maslow’s needs illuminate what motivates us in life and how may we grow over time.
Basic needs
Basic needs are deficiency needs we have as human beings that if unmet, we cannot physically function properly. For example, when you are hungry, it’s hard to concentrate at work. The longer our basic needs are unfulfilled, the stronger they will become — for another example, the longer you hold your pee in a meeting, the stronger the need it is to go to the restroom, until you cannot ignore it anymore. When a basic need has been more or less satisfied, it will go away, and we are freed to pursue the other needs that we have yet to satisfy, according to psychologist Saul McLeod (see related interoceptive bias or hungry judge effect in Self > Mind Hacking > Cognitive Biases). There are two kinds of basic needs: physiological and safety.
Physiological needs
Our physiological needs are biological requirements for survival such as air, food, drink, extrusion, shelter, clothing, warmth, sleep and sex. These needs are non-negotiable, for they are literally matters of life and death (maybe with the exception of sex). Some jokingly say that Wi-Fi 📶 belongs to this level of needs.
Safety needs
Once our physiological needs are satisfied, the need to feel safe and secure dominate. These include personal security, emotional security, financial security, health, and well-being, and they are especially crucial to child development. Anything ranging from a violent home, a crime-filled neighborhood, joblessness, serious illnesses, natural disasters to wars can take safety and security from us. In Self > Body Hacking, we will talk about best practices in maintaining health and wellbeing.
In the 21st century, safety and its flip side, fear, are often manipulated in public discourse to inflame rational minds and wage cognitive wars, especially on social media. If you feel that your country, home or values are being invaded, you would go far to defend them, right? About this, security specialist Bruce Schneier reminds us to distinguish between two kinds of security: “It’s a feeling, and it’s a reality. And they’re different. You could feel secure even if you’re not, and you can be secure even if you don’t feel it. And really, we have two separate concepts mapped onto the same word. So if you look at security from economic terms, it’s a trade-off. Every time you get some security, you’re always trading off something. And whether this is a personal decision, whether you’re going to install a burglar alarm in your home, or a national decision, whether you’re going to invade some foreign country, you’re going to trade off something — either money or time, convenience, capabilities, maybe fundamental liberties. So you’d think that us, as a successful species on the planet… would be really good at making these trade-offs. Yet it seems again and again that we’re hopelessly bad at it… we respond to the feeling of security and not the reality.” For a related discussion, see World > 21st Century Challenges > Eroding Democracy.
A very tragic and powerful illustration of the distinction between the feeling of lack of security and actually being in danger is given by Esther Perel, the daughter of two Polish-born Holocaust survivors, who grew up amongst Holocaust survivors in Belgium. Perel notices two groups around her: “those who didn’t die, and those who came back to life”. She observes that “those who didn’t die were people who lived tethered to the ground, afraid, untrusting. The world was dangerous, and pleasure was not an option. You cannot play, take risks, or be creative when you don’t have a minimum of safety, because you need a level of unself-consciousness to be able to experience excitement and pleasure. Those who came back to life were those who understood eroticism as an antidote to death.”
Fear, or the lack of security, drives a lot of our decisions in our increasingly divisive, populist times. Failing to tell the feeling of insecurity and actual danger apart could lead us to decisions that seem to give us a false sense of safety, but in reality costly, or reversely, to be unprepared for impending disasters that are actually fatal. We will examine this fallacy in Self > Mind Hacking > Cognitive Biases (in Salience bias, Neglect of probability, Normalcy bias).
Psychological needs
Psychological needs are also deficiency needs that if unmet, we cannot mentally function properly. If we have low self-esteem or feel shunned by our peers and society, for examples, we will feel depressed and might lose the will to live. In Self > Body Hacking > Stress Management & Mental Health, we will talk about best practices in meeting psychological needs.
Belonging and love
After our physiological and safety needs are more or less fulfilled, we naturally crave social connectedness and feelings of belongingness. We love and long to be loved; we embrace others and wish to be embraced — particularly during childhood. Friends, family, community, romance, school, work, social status, country, place, humanity, environment, and even beliefs all belong to this level. What these groups mean to us will be explored in Groups > Groups We Are In & Their Significance.
Esteem
Maslow classified esteem into two categories: 1. Self-esteem (dignity, achievement, mastery, independence) and 2. Respect from others (e.g., reputation, status, prestige). Esteem derives from the previous level of love and belonging — or our desire to be accepted and cherished by others — but many go beyond and above that to seek fame and glory. While as McLeod puts it, “the need for respect or reputation is most important for children and adolescents and precedes real self-esteem or dignity”, respect or reputation alone cannot give us self-esteem; the latter must be built by internal strength, competence, resilience and self-acceptance.
Self-fulfillment / growth needs
As opposed to deficiency needs, “growth needs continue to be felt and may even become stronger once they have been engaged. Growth needs do not stem from a lack of something, but rather from a desire to grow as a person,” writes McLeod. Maslow identified four types of growth or self-fulfillment needs: cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and transcendence.
Cognitive needs
Added later by Maslow, cognitive needs include knowledge and understanding, curiosity, exploration, meaning, and predictability.
Aesthetic needs
Also added later by Maslow, aesthetic needs include appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.
Self-actualization
Originally the highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy, self-actualization is the realization of our potential, fulfillment, personal growth, and peak experiences. In Maslow’s own words: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be…” Self-actualized people, wrote Maslow, “customarily have some mission in life, some task to fulfill, some problem outside themselves which enlists much of their energies.” Below are 15 characteristics of a self-actualized person identified by Maslow. How many of these self-actualizing characteristics do you have?
☐ Perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty (see Self > Principle > Context Matters & Things Change).
☐ Look at life and others objectively, without prejudice (see Self > Mind Hacking > Cognitive Biases and Groups > Social Biases).
☐ Embrace the facts and realities of the world, including ourselves, rather than denying or avoiding them.
☐ Spontaneous in thoughts and actions.
☐ Is creative.
☐ Have an unusual sense of humor.
☐ Interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others.
☐ Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives, leading to peak experiences (see Self > Method: Iterative Learning).
☐ Have strong moral and ethical standards that is fully internalized and independent of external authority (see Life > Principles > Life Actualization through Moral Struggles).
☐ Resistant to enculturation, but not purposely unconventional (see Groups > Group Conflicts > Externality & Deindividuation).
☐ Capable of deep appreciation of basic life-experience (see Life > Life Hacking).
☐ Establish deep satisfying interpersonal relationships with a few people (see Groups > Groups We Are In & Their Significance).
☐ Have democratic attitudes (see World > D3: Deliberative Direct Democracy).
☐ Have a need for privacy (see World > 21st Century Challenges > Tech-based Manipulation).
☐ Concerned for the welfare of humanity (see Life > 5 Simple Things You Can Do Now to Make an Instant and Lasting Difference in The World, World > 21st Century Challenges and World > Political Anti-bullying).
As predicted by Maslow and verified by psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, self-actualization is positively linked to our well-being, including “greater life satisfaction, curiosity, self-acceptance, positive relationships, environmental mastery, personal growth, autonomy, and purpose in life”. Self-actualization also predicts “greater work satisfaction and work performance… talent, skill… creative ability”, and humor ability. Despite having an elitist reputation, self-actualization scores follows a normal distribution. It is “not correlated with [gender], age, education, race, ethnicity, college GPA, or childhood income,” says Kaufman. That means as long as we don’t have serious deficiencies in basic and psychological needs, any one of us can pursue self-actualization and improve our well-being through self-actualizing. Moreover, “[p]rocesses that lead to self-actualization, then the development of these skills, like many others skills in life, can be learned,” according to psychologist William C. Compton.
More about self-actualization in Self > Principle: Growth Mindset and Life > Principles > Open Life View.
Transcendence
Later in his research, Maslow added transcendence to the top of the hierarchy of needs. If self-actualization, the former top level, is all about reaching the fullest of our personal potentials, transcendence truly transcends the self to fulfill the fullest potential of humankind. As Maslow put it: “Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos” (The Farther Reaches of Human Nature 📖, p. 269).
Maslow called the momentary transcendence “peak experience” and everlasting transcendence “plateau experience” (source). Philosopher Ken Wilber further identifies four factors that facilitate personal transformation: fulfillment, dissonance, insight, and opening. “Fulfillment means that the individual has generally fulfilled the basic tasks of a given stage or wave.” When this happens the person “is open to transformation” which is then facilitated by some sort of dissonance. “The new wave is struggling to emerge, the old wave is struggling to hang on, and the individual feels torn, feels dissonance, feels pulled in several directions.” Eventually, out of the dissonance comes “insight into the situation — insight into what one actually wants, and insight into what reality actually offers. … Finally, if all of those factors fall into place, then an opening to the next wave of consciousness — deeper, higher, wider, more encompassing — becomes possible.” This is not that different from the iterative learning experience (see Self > Method: Iterative Learning).
Kaufman suggests that self-actualized people “don’t sacrifice their potentialities in the service of others; rather, they use their full powers in the service of others (important distinction). You don’t have to choose either self-actualization or self-transcendence — the combination of both is essential to living a full and meaningful existence”. Neurologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, one of Maslow’s subjects, went further to assert that self-actualization does not exist without self-transcendence: “The true meaning of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system… Human experience is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is not a possible aim at all, for the simple reason that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it…. In other words, self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence” (Man’s Search for Meaning 📖, p.175).
“While Maslow believed that self-actualized, mature people are those most likely to have these self-transcendent experiences, he also felt that everyone was (potentially) capable of having them”, philosopher John Messerly notes. When we feel like we transcend ourselves to connect with the rest of the world, we get into altered states of consciousness and feel selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness and richness (STER), all are pretty damned good feelings. On the other hand, because transcendent individuals care about humanity holistically, Compton thinks that these individuals not only experience great joy but also “cosmic-sadness” when humanity fails to achieve transcendence due to self-centeredness, mundane concerns and fears.
Not a hierarchy but a continuum
The original view of hierarchy of needs was that one needed to complete the lower levels before they could get to the next level, like climbing a ladder or playing video games:
- One doesn’t get to satisfy their safety needs without satisfying their physiological needs;
- One won’t get to fully feel love and belonging until they achieving safety and security needs;
- One doesn’t get to have a healthy, all-rounded esteem without having a healthy dose of friendly, family, and sexual intimacy;
- One cannot self-actualize without having self-esteem, intellectual curiosity, and a sense of aesthetics;
- One cannot transcend before they self-actualize.
Maslow later revised this view and proposed that many multiple needs from different levels can motivate us at the same time. Let’s consider this scenario: you are on a first date but you are hungry. All levels of needs might be at work here:
- Physiologically you want food;
- Security-wise, your date is a stranger so you might be evaluating whether it is safe to trust them;
- In terms of love and belonging, you are wondering if you two will fall in love and have a future;
- At the same time, your esteem might prevent you from devouring as much food as you might want now as it might hurt your image and reputation;
- Lastly, if your date turns into your a significant other, the two of you may have a journey together to self-actualize and transcend.
In this situation, which needs would be prioritized? It depends on who you are. For some or in some periods in our lives, the need for love and belonging is stronger than physiological and security needs; for others, esteem and image are more important. For some of us such as Gautama Buddha, who sat seven weeks under the Bodhi tree without eating and drinking, none of the deficiency needs can get in the way of self-fulfillment and transcendence.
No wonder happiness is elusive. It’s sometimes a temporary relief from or enjoyment of physiological and physical needs. Beyond that, happiness is the endless pursuit of growth needs — ideally, when one growth goal is achieved, we will be motivated to pursue the next growth goal.
When needs are perceived, copied or threatened
While some people are happy to chase material and esteem needs, most of us inspire to and are capable of getting to the pyramid top of self-actualization and transcendence. “Unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by a failure to meet lower level needs. Life experiences, including divorce and loss of a job, may cause an individual to fluctuate between levels of the hierarchy. Therefore, not everyone will move through the hierarchy in a uni-directional manner but may move back and forth between the different types of needs,” McLeod reflects.
Here again lies the perils of having perceived but not actual insecurity: it prevents us from growing, self-actualizing and transcending. People who don’t feel secure tend to cling onto authority figures and status quo rather than creating or innovating. They don’t feel confident of their abilities to affect change or to author their own lives. Ridding of one’s perceived insecurity would help arrested individuals grow. More in Groups > Group Conflicts > Attachment Styles, Life > Method: Life Stories, and Groups > Group Conflicts > Bullying.
Equally restricting are borrowed needs. Entrepreneur Lukis Burgis uses the term “mimetic desires” to describe needs or wants we have that are not originating from ourselves but borrowed from others, i.e., wanting what the others want. In a podcast, he talks about the dark side of mimetic desires, including engaging in zero-sum competitions that do not exist, modeling the wrong people, doing stupid things, etc., and how social media engineers mimetic desires for profit, worsening this problem in our society.
As the threats of the 21st century become more severe and complex, our complexity of mind is seriously lagging behind the complexity of society. At the same time, many in the younger generations may lack basic, safety, love and belonging, and esteem fulfillment to get to self-actualize or transcend. Tackling the most critical challenges of our time requires a healthy body and mind. If we are struggling at the lower level of the hierarchy of needs like sense of security, it’s hard to do social good. On the other hand, if those who have a healthy mind extend their help to those in need, the people in need can have healthy minds too and make better decisions and pay it forward. Therefore as good ancestors 📖, it is important think about how to build good institutions to give next generations a chance to do both. See World > Political Anti-bullying > Values-based Democracy as the Anti-bully and Human Rights as the Anti-bully.
At the same time, individuals need to develop self resilience to brace the storms. As Maslow recommended: “let us think of life as a process of choices…. There may be a movement toward defense, toward safety, toward being afraid; but over on the other side, there is the growth choice. To make the growth choice instead of the fear choice a dozen time a day is to move a dozen times a day toward self-actualization. Self-actualization is an ongoing process…. [it is] little accessions accumulated one by one.” (The Farther Reaches of Human Nature 📖, p. 44, 49).
Being aware of how well we are dong at each level of the the hierarchy of needs, evaluating how much each level of needs currently motivate us, improving our robustness at all levels, and helping others achieve their next level of fulfillment, are the basic homework we have to do as humans of the 21st century.
Aspirations but not facts
Critiques of Maslow’s model of self-actualization caution that his conclusions should not be blindly accepted as scientific fact. Rather than forgone conclusions, Maslow’s needs serve as a powerful metaphor for our existence and our society:
- First of all, we can see the hierarchy of needs in terms of developmental stages in life — most adults have climbed the ladder from survival (we don’t pee our pants anymore, for instance), safety (we learnt not to run with scissors), love/belonging (we have some experience in friendship and dating), esteem (we built a self-identity and try to get social status like graduating university), all the way to self-actualization (e.g., that “meaningful dream job” you’ve been working towards).
- What’s more, basic human rights correspond to all basic needs such as clean air, food, shelter, warmth; psychological needs such as health, safety and security; and esteem needs such as equality and freedom, so individuals can be free to pursue growth needs on the basis of human rights.
- Last but not least, we can see the hierarchy of needs in terms historical eras, from physiological (hunter/gatherers), safety (farmers), love/belonging (villager, church-goers, citizens), esteem (business owners and professionals), to self-actualization (influencers, creators, founders). Development of nations follow a similar progression too (more in Groups > Group Conflicts > Altitudes of Societal Development).
Where we currently fall in the hierarchy of needs corresponds strongly to whether we live in a safe, free, stable society with ample opportunities. Living in a post-deficiency society gives us a leg up the ladder of needs, allowing us to focus more on self-actualization and transcendence. How may we build or live in such a free, safe and open society? See World > D3: Deliberative Direct Democracy.
Do you have any suggestions, doubts, hypothesis or experience for this topic? Please comment below 👇!
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