Heroes Not Zombies

I’ve been familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for some time, but I’ve recently discovered I was only aware of part of his schema.

His idea was that we have many needs which motivate us to act and to choose how to act, and those needs are, to some degree, prioritised with the more basic needs demanding attention before “higher” needs emerge.

His most basic needs are those related to physical security – the needs for food, drink and shelter. Without food, without drink and without shelter we are unlikely to survive.

All human beings need love. We need relationships. If you think that’s not true, pause for a moment and ask yourself why solitary confinement is used as a punishment in prisons, or why “sending to Coventry” ie enforcing social exclusion has historically existed as a community punishment. These love and relationship needs are about emotional security. In Maslow’s hierarchy, first you need to attend to your physical security, then your emotional security.

However, he isn’t finished there. Next up is self-esteem, without which we don’t feel we matter. This is closely bound up in our sense of identity, our “worth”.

So far, so good, and this is where my familiarity ended. But in fact there is a whole other level above these needs in Maslow’s description.

All of these needs so far can be thought of as “deficiency needs”. They are based on “lack” and meeting them is useful to us, so they can be thought of as “utilitarian”, or as about “getting” things.

Above this, Maslow describes “being needs”, which are ends in themselves. They are about “giving”, and are more creative than utilitarian. Being needs are those related to purpose, value and meaning. These needs, he says, “express an overflow of our own being”.

It is these “being needs” which make us “fully human”.

When we recognise that animals occupy only the lower rungs of Maslow’s ladder of needs – those for sustenance, shelter, and some form of social life (but of course not all animals belong to groups) – we can see what this means. We are only fully human when we pass beyond these, as the being or meta-needs that lie ahead can be pursued only by us, or by beings like us ……. As far as we know, no animal wonders why it exists. Or, to put it another way, we are the only animals that do, and that wonder is precisely the threshold between our being only animals and being fully human. (Gary Lachman)