Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Maslow identified what he called a hierarchy of needs which motivate human beings, starting with survival needs, such as food, drink and shelter, then moving upwards to social needs (relationship needs) of connecting and belonging, to esteem needs of being recognised and respected. Beyond that he postulated being needs, as opposed to these “deficiency needs”, which became evident as self-actualisation, something he thought wouldn’t happen until the lower needs were met.
This hierarchy has been criticised and its certainly not the case that human development follows any rigid, layer by layer, step-wise progression. (I think integral theory provides a more interesting way of looking at old hierarchies – from an integral viewpoint its not so much a hierarchy at all as layers which grow on top of each other with every layer continuing to exist)
Well, Gary Lachman, in his Secret History of Consciousness, mentions the writer, Colin Wilson, once researching the history of murder and finding something curious.
At first it seemed murders were mainly committed for gain – food for example. Then other types of murder appeared, which involved murderers protecting their lifestyle, their homes or their property. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the sex crime emerged (think of Jack the Ripper) where the murder was a kind of sex act in itself. In the twentieth century he noticed the emergence of murders for fame – to become known, and then towards the end of that century the appearance of the “motiveless murder”, the unpredictable, random killing sprees.
Wilson was struck that there was a parallel here with Maslow’s hierarchy – food, the home, sex, self-esteem – and where did that lead to? Murder as a creative act? Murder as an act of self-actualisation? Wilson rejected this idea, rightly claiming that crime is not a means to self-actualisation. Criminals try to grab what they want, instead of putting in the time and effort to self-actualise. They will murder a celebrity to gain celebrity for example.
He posed the interesting question in relation to this discovery – was murder a kind of Jungian shadow, reflecting the level of development of human consciousness? If so, it might be further evidence that we are indeed moving as a species to a new stage of development, towards a focus on self-actualisation and creativity.
Wow! That’s quite a leap, huh? But certainly a thought provoking one!
Heroes Not Zombies 
Stephen Pinker, is that his name, argues we are now more civilised- i.e. less violent- than at any time before, I don’t agree, violence takes many forms and the physical murder of a fellow human being by a ‘murderer’ takes our eye off the ball. I suggest that when we talk of murder we do so against the social, political and cultural background of when these killings take place. This is not to argue against Maslow’s model or of individual morality. What is missing here is the concept of power and of defining what murder and killing is. Theories of the development and meaning of the state in relation to their ‘right’ to commit acts of violence are well developed, what is now happening is that many people are awakening to how these ‘rights’ to commit violence relate to human sovereignty- how many millions of people have been murdered in Iraq. Saying that, TV programmes like Breaking Bad hint at the tenuous relationship human to human life can have and this connection between celebrity and success. The movie, City of God, particularly timely, gets this message on a much deeper level- survival of the fittest. Dominant theme in all, becoming more diluted as we become more civilised, is that men are at the centre of the removing of another from their sphere of being.