Basic Needs
human motivation, materialism, and happiness
Recently, altruism has really dominated my thoughts. It’s always something that has been in the back of my mind. I have for many years had this vague sense that I got really lucky to be who I am and that some other people aren’t so lucky, so it’s only right that I should help them. This seems pretty reasonable, right? So I set out on a trip to explore this vague sense further, and have discovered so much that my mind is swimming in new information, struggling to keep afloat and make sense of things. That’s why I’ve been writing here so much — to try to gather and share my thoughts in a somewhat organized manner.
One of the things that I have convinced myself of is that we should each find a standard of living that I call “having our basic needs covered”, then not try to push the luxury needle above this, instead taking extra money and using it to help ourselves and/or other people who have had much worse draws in life. This is nice and neat and clean as a theory, but in order to really get a handle on it, one must define “basic needs”. And that is actually quite a difficult task. In this post, I’ll walk you through my own process, and as time goes on hopefully I will be able to amend this with the opinions of others as well.
Maslow’s Pyramid
In the spirit of science and not reinventing the wheel, let’s take a deep dive into the work of some other smart people who have studied human needs and motivation before coming to our own conclusions.
We’ll start at a point we have all probably heard of, from a friend, cultural reference, or intro to psychology course: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Developed in 1943, this idea quickly became a cornerstone of our understanding of human motivation, and has been a massive influence on psychological thinking on the topic all the way through today. Let’s take a look at the model:
And now let’s break it down in a little more detail in order to increase our understanding.
At the bottom we have the physiological needs: air, water, food, clothing, and shelter. Simple enough, and entirely necessary to actually stay alive. On the next level we have a feeling of safety — personal, financial, and health. Without this, it’s hard to focus on anything else. If we feel like we are in immediate danger of harm or death, it’s easy to imagine why removing that danger becomes a priority over all else other than physiological needs. And in the extended absence of safety, we experience stress that becomes more severe over time, impairing our basic functioning abilities.
Up next is a sense of love and belonging — the ability to form and maintain friendship, family, and intimacy. We have a need to belong and to be loved, whether by small or large groups of people, or both. Humans are social animals and throughout our evolutionary history living in tribes has proven to be an enormous advantage, so it’s only natural that our brains would be configured to drive us towards developing and maintaining relationships with others. Without good relationships, people become lonely, socially anxious, and even clinically depressed.
We start moving into the higher order needs with esteem — the need to feel respected, including the need for self-esteem and self-respect. Maslow described a lower and higher level within this stage, the lower level being esteem provided by others, and the higher level being provided internally. I refer to these as outer and core confidence, and this is a topic that will be explored in more depth in later posts. If this category is lacking, people can have low self-esteem, an inferiority complex, weakness, helplessness, and even depression.
Finally, we move into what is probably the most controversial level, self-actualization. This level is about “realization of one’s full potential”, described by Maslow as “the desire to accomplish everything one can, to become the most that one can be”. This could be a desire to be a great parent, a great athlete, a great artist or inventor, or any number of other things. It is the way most people attribute “meaning” to their lives.
Surely you’ll recognize many of these needs from your own life and experiences. As I read through the levels and explanations, I found myself nodding and agreeing the whole way. It’s a very nice and clean representation. But it’s been a while since 1943 — is Maslow’s hierarchy still regarded as state of the art? Are there any people that disagree, or take issue with it? The answer to this question is a little more murky. Research on human needs and motivation is murky by nature, in fact, as it’s not exactly mathematical — satisfactory results cannot simply be produced by a single experiment. Many people have ideas about human motivation, and the topic has been discussed extensively for years by scientists. Let’s talk about some of the more modern research and debates, and how this impacts our understanding.
Modern Critiques
Kenrick et. al. (2010) proposed a major fundamental change to Maslow’s pyramid, in an influential paper that was very thoroughly researched. While the bottom of the pyramid remained intact in more or less the same state, “self-actualization” was removed from the top and replaced by “parenting”.
This shifted the model to represent a more purely evolutionary view. In order to thrive and survive, a species must have a strong need for reproduction. Otherwise, if they don’t care that much about reproducing, they will simply not do it, the numbers will dwindle, and eventually they will become extinct. Humans of course are no exception to this rule, and it can be clearly seen by our culture that sex is a very important part of how we think and operate, as are children and parenting. Kenrick et. al. argue that Maslow’s self-actualization, for example work in creative arts, can actually be categorized as behaviors that subconsciously serve the purpose of improving chances of mating. This model is very much biologically influenced and provides a lot of strong insight, backed by a huge amount of research, on some of our fundamental needs and motivations.
However, not everyone is totally on board with this model. As soon as it appeared, so did critiques, and their main issue was the fact that this model fits all animals but forgets unique human traits that have evolved through culture, as Maslow tried to address with self-actualization. In one particularly salient commentary, Kesebir et. al. (2010) highlight a number of ways in which human culture has contributed to our evolution and began to introduce motivations that are a little less Darwinian and a little more human. They point out that research has shown a lack of innate need for parenting in a number of situations and postulate that the drive for sex alone is enough to ensure procreation, due to the lack of birth control in human history. They then move into what comes after — successfully raising children has not represented the end of life for humans for many years. They suggest based on psychological research that after parenting comes an innate need for wisdom and ‘meaning in life’, which has been demonstrated universally across cultures. This is also a need which is not only driven by but also often fulfilled by culture, through means such as community, art, religion, or scholarly pursuits.
Kesbir et. al. are not the only ones who just wouldn’t give up on self-actualization. A number of other people have been down the same path and been unable to settle with the fact that once parenting has been accomplished, all human needs are met. In fact, the article itself was originally published alongside 4 critiques, including that of Kesbir et. al.
So can I give a conclusive and definite answer here? Definitely not. But I can absolutely say that after reviewing all of this theory, I think we can get a pretty good idea at least of what the basic needs are. Here’s my distillation:
- Living Needs: Air, Food, Water, Shelter, Sleep, Hygiene
- Safety Needs: Not feeling like you are likely to die or lose any of your living needs soon
- Community Needs: Good healthy relationships with friends and family
In my opinion, it will be very challenging for someone to pursue altruistic and other goals greater than themselves if they do not have at least these three basic needs levels met. You can also keep going up the pyramid with what humans typically seek out once these first three levels are satisfied, but I would not categorize anything beyond the above as “basic needs”. Three more levels are introduced below, but all three of these categories are very much based upon on personality, self-confidence, and values, and can vary greatly from person to person. They also do not necessarily come in this exact order for everyone, and of course are simply my opinion as distilled from the research above.
- Status and Esteem: Self confidence and respect from peers
- Partnership and Parenting: Finding a stable long term romantic partner and raising children
- Meaning and Purpose: Finding a way to make your mark on the world
We will without a doubt dive deeper on these higher level needs in future pieces, but for now let’s just leave them here to be passively contemplated and return to the focus of this piece, basic needs.
A Strange Disconnect
So the question is, now that we have reviewed a bunch of psychology and biology literature and formed an opinion on what qualifies as “basic needs”, what are we going to actually do with this information? Well, there’s quite a lot actually.
First, we know that having more money and stuff will not make us more happy. We also know that US culture is largely based around the idea that having more money and stuff will make us more happy. Evolution also supports this concept — after all, having more resources is never a bad thing and historically would make you more likely to survive, so it has therefore been selected for. But in modern society, we have created more efficient ways of getting people to the point where their basic needs are met, especially in the category of living needs (for example, we have supermarkets rather than gardens and spears for hunting). Chances are if you are reading this, your basic needs are met. And we know what higher level needs are, and not one of them is “more money” or “more stuff”.
So here we have a large disconnect between what your brain and your culture are telling you to do and what will actually make you feel that your life is going in the right direction. Your mind and everyone else around you is screaming “more more more more!” You are blasted with advertisements at all times for stuff that can make you happier, that can make you that person that is living the good life (right?). Your friends and family are all chasing better jobs with higher salaries. Dreaming about bigger houses with nicer cars. For many people, although they would never admit it (absurdly enough, for cultural reasons), money is the motivator. What are they doing with their lives? Working so they can make more money so they can buy more things then they will be more happy. US-based readers will recognize that it’s the American dream, literally. It’s one of the founding values of the country.
At the same time, the reality is that, psychologically, there is simply no need for more stuff. Nowhere on anyone’s pyramid of motivations and/or needs do we find “more money”, or “better car”, or “vacation at a tropical island”. And we’ve already visited hedonic adaptation enough to know that even if we do get this stuff, it will make no actual difference in our lives. So the conclusion is that many of us have been grandfathered in to the view that life’s purpose is to waste boatloads of time and money on things that literally mean nothing to us and do not actually improve our or anyone else’s lives at all. Hmmm.
Well, let’s look at how to fix this. The only logical conclusion is that we should stop wasting money on this kind of stuff. As a side benefit, we will then have a lot of extra money we can use for things that do truly matter to us. At the same time, we can’t renounce all the things. If we get rid of our mattress, we won’t be able to get a good night’s sleep and will be ineffective in whatever we try to do. If we renounce our food, we will be starving and need to go get food before we can do anything else. If we renounce our hygiene products, we will look like hobos and smell bad, then nobody will trust us or want to be around us. We still need to hold on to our basic needs. The hard part though, is defining what exactly falls into the category of basic needs and what doesn’t.
Defining Your Needs
One way that I have found to be extremely effective in defining a basic need is whether it pays for itself as far as its ability to further your life goals. So, for example, if you eat well, you will have a healthy body and brain, and your ability to do good work will be greatly enhanced. If you have a comfortable bed you will sleep better and accomplish much better work. It’s easy to see how these two basic needs pay their own costs. While it might cost you money and/or time to get healthy food and a comfortable bed, they both provide such a benefit to your productivity that you could say they pay for themselves many times over. In a sense, this is nothing more than a value judgement, but with the extra dimension of “how can this thing help me to achieve my real life goals?”
Sharp readers may have noticed that this criteria for defining needs also opens a hole for a new type of need outside simply basic needs, and they would be right. Let’s look at an example. Most people would probably agree that having a nice suit and watch is excessive and unneeded, definitely not part of anyone’s basic needs. But what if there was a man who would meet with very wealthy people to talk with them about donating to charity, and his wearing a suit and a watch helped him to make a more favorable impression with these people and therefore secure more donations? In that case, you might say that the suit and watch actually paid for themselves in much the same way that basic needs do. But nobody would agree that it’s a basic need. So what gives?
For the hypothetical man in the example above, the suit and watch are certainly not basic needs, but they are also not wasteful luxuries. I call things that fit into this category productivity needs. They are not necessary to keep your body and mind in good health and functioning properly, and the absence of any of them will not lead to physical or psychological harm as is the case with basic needs. But at the same time, they are still things that one can easily justify having and which help to accomplish greater life goals.
When we add productivity needs to the equation, this means that ethical living doesn’t mean being a monk with only the bare basics. But this is also not an “excuse” to have expensive stuff or buy into materialism — its a completely different lens through which we can view things. Rather than being attached to things for the sake of having them, or thinking that they will bring us happiness or impress people, we view things as tools. Means to an end. If I can use this bicycle to stay in shape and get to work faster, it might be worth it. And if I get a well-built bicycle instead of a cheap one, it will break less and cost less time and money to maintain.
So over time, as your view on things changes, you take a look at all your stuff, removed from cultural perspective, and make a call on whether each thing is a true need — that is, your having it makes you so much more effective in accomplishing your life’s purpose that you could easily say that it has “paid for itself” many times over.
This is a very fuzzy science, so let me also give an example to the contrary. Let’s say someone has 10 pairs of shoes, because they are a fashionable person and they like shoes. This person might be able to convince themselves that their shoes make them happy and make them able to wear the “right shoes” for any situation, and as such they pay for themselves. But in order to get where we want, we need to dig deeper here. Why do the shoes make them happy? Because they feel like if other people see them wearing the shoes, they will perceive them to be fashionable, and their ego will get a boost since it’s closely tied with what other people think of them. But if they were to zoom out for a moment and take a look at their wider life goals, which I am assuming are not “to be seen as being fashionable”, or “to have my ego stroked by other people” this is simply unnecessary (and if that is truly their life goal, then disregard everything I’m saying, but they should probably spend more time considering their life goals). While often it can be very challenging to disconnect with cultural values and expectations, when evaluating basic needs, it’s important to do so. Everything must be evaluated in a “zoomed out” perspective, through the lens of overall values and life goals. For this person, it would mean realizing that one, maybe two pairs of shoes is honestly more than enough to fulfill their needs entirely and the other 8 or 9 are simply excess.
One method I like to use to try to get my own perspective in the right place is for any given thing, to think of all the people who do not have that thing, and whether they are perfectly fine without it, or whether their basic health or productivity suffers. For example, having at least one pair of shoes is important, and would represent a hit to health and productivity without it. I have met people who honestly did not have even one pair of shoes because they could not afford it, and saw how difficult it was for them. Another method is to pit the thing against my own life goal of trying to help people in need. Do I have this thing for myself, or honestly for the purpose of helping me serve those in need more effectively? And of course there must be a balance here too. I am not a perfect human being, not every single thing I own passes this test, not even close. But I’m always thinking about it, and always working on it, and that’s the best I can do — get closer every day!
Selfish Basic Needs
I return to altruism a lot in this article, but I also want to point out that even if altruism is not one of your primary and core values (keep reading pragmatic life and you’ll get there eventually though, just a warning!), the basic needs game is still extremely valuable, because it makes you more money. Most people think that the way to make more money is to get a raise. For example, if you make $50k, and get a $10k raise, this would be cause for celebration! But you must also realize that if you make $50k, then you reduce your living costs yearly by $10k on your own, which is actually not a very difficult task and can be done easily without being any less happy, you have made precisely the same gains.
A shining example of this type of living is Mr. Money Mustache, who saved most of his salary each year and retired at age 30, financially independent. Yet he still lives quite a comfortable and happy life, just one in which he doesn’t waste boatloads of money on stuff he doesn’t need. And there are thousands of people who have read this guy’s writing and been inspired to do the same thing since, forming a giant community of “Mustachians” — people who find ways to waste significantly less money and use the excess to buy themselves freedom. So figuring out your basic needs isn’t just a way to live like a monk for ethical reasons that you may not be entirely on board with, it’s also quite an effective way for you to make yourself rich, then hopefully use that money for things that will truly make you happy, like experiences, people, and financial independence.
Wrap Up
This has been a long article and we have covered quite a lot of ground, so I think it’s only appropriate that we spend a moment to go over what we have discussed today. First, we took a deep dive into human motivation, reviewing some scientific literature and boiling it down to a reasonable estimate of what a human’s “basic needs” are. We then discussed the fact that US culture is founded on very backward principles which tell people that spending time and money on accumulating things is what will make them happy, where in reality this has been proven to be false. We bring it all together by discussing how we can re-align our values around defining our basic needs, then adding “productivity needs” — things that “pay for themselves” by making us more effectively able to accomplish our life goals. By redefining all of our “needs”, we can eliminate many unnecessary costs from our lives, and free up a bunch of extra money and time to use either on ourselves or on trying to help others that have had tough draws in life and struggle to cover their own most basic needs.
This is some unconventional stuff, and might make you uncomfortable, there’s no question about it. Have some feedback or think I’m full of it? Please leave a comment and we can discuss it!
Photo is of a buddhist temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I spent 10 days at a buddhist monastery and did a lot of thinking about how to define basic needs, which was much of the inspiration for this post.
If you liked this post, please “recommend” it by clicking the small heart below and to the left. Thanks!
