by Peter Latona

Created on: July 24, 2009

World Crisis and Man's Hierarchy of Needs

Many of us are familiar with Abraham Maslow's work on the hierarchy of human needs. This was not so much an original postulate, but more of an attempt to synthesize a large body of work related to human motivation. Prior to Maslow, most explanations for what drives human behavior focused on singular behaviors such as biological, success or power. Maslow created a hierarchy of needs divided into two groups, (deficiency needs and growth needs), with eight levels. These levels might be visualized as a pyramid with the bottom being one and the pinnacle being eight. These levels not only describe the evolvement of human motivation, but also the evolvement of human beings.

Deficiency needs:
1) Physiological: hunger, thirst and other basic bodily needs
2) Safety and security
3) Belongingness & Love needs: social needs, to be accepted
4) Esteem needs: to achieve, be recognized and gain approval

Growth needs:
5) Cognitive: to learn and to understand
6) Aesthetic: art, music, symmetry, order, beauty
7) Selfactualization: to find oneself and our highest potential
8) Self-transcendence: to connect with something beyond our ego

Maslow's theory was first published over 50 years ago and still enjoys wide acceptance for its explanation of human motivation despite the lack of hard empirical data to back it up. Whether you might argue there should be only three levels or five levels or maybe even ten, the theory just makes sense on a gut level. We can also see a correspondence between these levels of motivation to the evolution of man.

Levels one and two can be viewed as corresponding to pre-historic man. These cavemen so to speak, woke up each day with the basic motivation to stay alive. They needed to find food, water and safety from the many physical dangers existing in their world. Families were very much a part of the need for safety and protection for there was strength in numbers. As this need evolved, families began to form bands because groups offered even greater strength in numbers. The formation of these groups spurred the beginning of the third level, social needs.

Early man roamed the land in bands to find food and water, but eventually they learned to grow their own. The transition man from hunter/gatherers to agricultural meant that they could now stay in one place. Eventually, enough people would be living in close proximity that man's third level of needs further evolved. Communities formed because of man's need

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