The Peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy

The Edge 2012: What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?

Scientists’ greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called “beautiful” or “elegant.” Historical examples are Kepler’s explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr’s explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick’s double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it “was so beautiful it had to be true.” What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena.
— THE EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION, 2012

My favorite beautiful explanation is not so much a beautiful theory that explains the facts, as it is a beautiful explanation of the facts themselves, namely, Abraham Maslow’s description of self-actualizing people.

As you may recall, Maslow is most famous for his “hierarchy of needs,” proposed in the 1943 paper, “A Theory of Human Motivation.” There are many legitimate criticisms of his theory (as well as many misinterpretations), but the key here is Maslow’s concept of self-actualization, the peak of Maslow’s hierarchy.

As Maslow wrote in 1943, “Even if all these needs [the physiological needs, the safety needs, the love needs, the esteem needs] are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.”

Reading this now, perhaps it strikes you as a little idealistic; maybe even a little selfish. Perhaps you agree with David Brooks, who wrote a recent column in the New York Times entitled “It’s Not About You,” advising college graduates that “most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.”

If so, it may surprise you to know that Abraham Maslow would completely agree. What most people don’t know is that later in his career, Maslow greatly expanded his theory of motivation to include not only self-actualization, but another equally important higher-order need, namely: self-transcendence, or the need to go beyond one’s own individual needs to address the needs of others and work towards common good.

As I have explained before, Maslow did not see these two highest-order needs as competing. In 1964, two decades after he first introduced his hierarchy of needs, Maslow wrote once again about the need for self-actualization, this time explaining that self-actualization “is simultaneously a seeking and fulfilling of the self and also an achieving of the selflessness which is the ultimate expression of the real self. It resolves the dichotomy between selfish and unselfish. Also between inner and outer—because the cause for which one works in [self-actualization] work is introjected and becomes part of the self so that the world and the self are no longer different.”

In other words, self-actualization work “transcends the self without trying to” and we achieve, simply by seeking our own self-actualization, the kind of selflessness that is so highly valued in every major religious tradition, the kind of selflessness that so many of us are trying to live up to and in to. Furthermore, Maslow noted that “self-actualization via a commitment to an important job and to worthwhile work could also be said, then, to be the path to human happiness (by contrast with the direct attack or the direct search for happiness—happiness is an epiphenomenon, a by-product, something not to be sought directly but an indirect reward for virtue). The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important. . . . this was universal truth for all my self-actualizing subjects.”

What this all means, then, is that meaningful work toward common good is not only the most effective way to help others, but also the most effective way to help ourselves. Maslow explained this all most potently in 1970 (the year of his death), in what is now my favorite beautiful explanation:

“The empirical fact is that self-actualizing people, our best experiencers, are also the most compassionate, our great improvers and reformers of society, our most effective fighters against injustice, inequality, slavery, cruelty, exploitation (and also our best fighters for excellence, effectiveness, competence). And it also becomes clearer and clearer that the best “helpers” are the most fully human persons. What I may call the boddhisattvic path is an integration of self-improvement and social zeal, i.e., the best way to become a better “helper” is to become a better person. But one necessary aspect of becoming a better person is via helping other people. . . . Self-actualizing people are, without one single exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves. . . . So one must and can do both simultaneously.”

For more on this idea, and modern scientific evidence that backs it up, see “Synergy,” my response to the 2007 Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”

For help deciding how best to simultaneously pursue self-actualization and self-transcendence, see “Where Can You Make the Greatest Difference?” my response to the 2002 Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question?”

For other responses to this question, visit: The Edge Annual Question 2012

Some of my favorite responses from 2012 include:
* Nathan Myhrvold, “The Scientific Method”
* Michael Shermer, “Empiricism, or See for Yourself”
* Timothy D. Wilson, “We Are What We Do”
* Kevin Kelly, “We Are Stardust”
* Howard Gardner, “The Importance of Individual Human Beings”
* Joel Gold, “Dark Matter of the Mind”
* David G. Myers, “Group Polarization”
* Elizabeth Dunn, “Why We Feel Pressed for Time”
* Richard H. Thaler, “Commitment”
* John McWhorter, “How Do You Get From a Lobster to a Cat?”
* Alan Alda, “There Are More Things In Heaven and Earth. . .”
. . . 2012 was an inspiring year at the Edge.