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

: Air, Food, Water, Shelter, Sleep, Hygiene Safety Needs : Not feeling like you are likely to die or lose any of your living needs soon

: 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

: Self confidence and respect from peers Partnership and Parenting : Finding a stable long term romantic partner and raising children

: 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.