Most of us have pretty clear ideas about what we want at any point in time (food, drink, sex, peace and quiet etc), but are less good at planning our lives in the long term. Sometimes we get it right and marry a warm and sympathetic partner, get a job that pays enough and keeps us interested, and have holidays and recreations we enjoy. We then congratulate ourselves on our wisdom rather than our luck, and consider what should be done about people who are lonely or in unhappy relationships, are unemployed or in poorly-paid and tedious jobs, and who otherwise lead dreary and unhappy lives. For some people, this concern for the needs of others is part of their job. They include politicians and other policy-makers, but also a whole range of professions that make day-to-day decisions about people with learning difficulties, people with mental health problems, the elderly and infirm, and others judged incapable of making decisions about their own lives.
But this task raises a real problem: on what basis can you assess the needs of other people? One traditional solution is to assume that all people have the same needs and should live their lives in the same way (usually involving the performance by the entire community of the same religious or patriotic rituals). But in more individualistic societies, another way of assessing needs is required. Fortunately, psychologists and social researchers have the answer: detailed lists of human needs and ‘objective’ measures of the quality of life. The oldest of these categorisations of needs, and the one most people have heard of, is Mazlow’s Hierarchy.
Mazlow proposed that human beings seek to satisfy needs in a set progression, starting from the most basic physiological needs. Once these needs are satisfied, human beings can aim to satisfy successively higher needs, leading ultimately to self-actualisation and self-transcendence. What do these last two phrases mean? ‘Self-actualisation’ for Mazlow meant reaching one’s full potential, which he believed was marked by creativity, an internalised morality, spontaneity, and closeness to others. ‘Self-transcendence’ referred to peak experiences in which a person experiences a sense of spiritual fulfilment.
There are some obvious problems with Mazlow’s approach. People are too diverse to fulfill their needs in the orderly way he suggested. We can all think of examples of people who follow a different hierarchy: people who starve themselves for beauty or for religious belief, and people who seek out risk and danger. People also differ in what they regard as ‘self-transcendence’. People like Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary proposed it could be achieved through drugs (so for that matter did Ian Drury in his song Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll). To most of us, however, drug-taking looks more like self-destructive hedonism. I suspect that Mazlow esteemed ‘self-transcendence’ because he was a humanist psychologist. If models wrote hierarchies of needs, they would probably place beauty and poise at the top, while footballers would place agility and teamwork. In other words, setting up a supposed hierarchy of needs becomes an implicit way of ranking other people or looking down on their needs. This would not matter too much, except that hierarchies of needs get imposed on others.
The most imposed hierarchy of all is that of rationality. Many philosophers (who as a rule are rather good at reasoning) have decided that rationality is not only at the top of the hierarchy but also the true marker of humanity. People can then be ranked according to their reasoning powers, with questions raised about the extent to which people with severely-impaired reasoning are really human. This has led to the ‘thought experiment’ by the philosopher Peter Singer and others which compares the relative worth of a severely-disabled person and one of the more intelligent animals. Singer’s views are subtle and have been misrepresented, but anxiety about this kind of though experiment are understandable. They are based on the fear that somewhere in a garret is a lonely soul planning a rise to political power in which thought experiments will be implemented. Then the killings will begin again.
But this task raises a real problem: on what basis can you assess the needs of other people? One traditional solution is to assume that all people have the same needs and should live their lives in the same way (usually involving the performance by the entire community of the same religious or patriotic rituals). But in more individualistic societies, another way of assessing needs is required. Fortunately, psychologists and social researchers have the answer: detailed lists of human needs and ‘objective’ measures of the quality of life. The oldest of these categorisations of needs, and the one most people have heard of, is Mazlow’s Hierarchy.
Mazlow proposed that human beings seek to satisfy needs in a set progression, starting from the most basic physiological needs. Once these needs are satisfied, human beings can aim to satisfy successively higher needs, leading ultimately to self-actualisation and self-transcendence. What do these last two phrases mean? ‘Self-actualisation’ for Mazlow meant reaching one’s full potential, which he believed was marked by creativity, an internalised morality, spontaneity, and closeness to others. ‘Self-transcendence’ referred to peak experiences in which a person experiences a sense of spiritual fulfilment.
There are some obvious problems with Mazlow’s approach. People are too diverse to fulfill their needs in the orderly way he suggested. We can all think of examples of people who follow a different hierarchy: people who starve themselves for beauty or for religious belief, and people who seek out risk and danger. People also differ in what they regard as ‘self-transcendence’. People like Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary proposed it could be achieved through drugs (so for that matter did Ian Drury in his song Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll). To most of us, however, drug-taking looks more like self-destructive hedonism. I suspect that Mazlow esteemed ‘self-transcendence’ because he was a humanist psychologist. If models wrote hierarchies of needs, they would probably place beauty and poise at the top, while footballers would place agility and teamwork. In other words, setting up a supposed hierarchy of needs becomes an implicit way of ranking other people or looking down on their needs. This would not matter too much, except that hierarchies of needs get imposed on others.
The most imposed hierarchy of all is that of rationality. Many philosophers (who as a rule are rather good at reasoning) have decided that rationality is not only at the top of the hierarchy but also the true marker of humanity. People can then be ranked according to their reasoning powers, with questions raised about the extent to which people with severely-impaired reasoning are really human. This has led to the ‘thought experiment’ by the philosopher Peter Singer and others which compares the relative worth of a severely-disabled person and one of the more intelligent animals. Singer’s views are subtle and have been misrepresented, but anxiety about this kind of though experiment are understandable. They are based on the fear that somewhere in a garret is a lonely soul planning a rise to political power in which thought experiments will be implemented. Then the killings will begin again.
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