Hierarchy of Needs

We are all the same.  At the physiological root of being a human, we all have the same basic needs.  We need oxygen, food and water, sex and the need to expel waste from our bodies…everybody poops. 

We also all need love, self esteem and a sense of worth or mastery.   We need self-fulfillment or acceptance without prejudice and finally, self-actualization.

In our global society the most basic physiological needs are easily met, though clearly not by all.  In the United States, let alone the World, there is still the need to have clean water, food and shelter for all.  There is also a need among many in our global society to have safety and security from persecution along with the need for love and a sense of family.   

I am sympathetic to those that are lacking those basic needs, yet I can not impart opinion toward those particular struggles.  I am fortunate and grateful to have all my physiological needs met. 

This, however, is about the need and search for self-esteem; the need by all to be special, outstanding, intelligent and talented.  This need is actually good and pure even though the term “self-esteem” has been cursed with a reputation of selfishness.

There are two ways to acknowledge self-esteem, either by judgment of others or comparison to others.  One of these has been at the forefront of the idea of self-esteem we know today.

JUDGEMENT:

We can easily judge our own situation.  We judge our income, the car we drive or our living arrangements.  It is by judging, not comparison, that leads one down a path of ill acquired self-esteem, or self-esteem at the expense of others. 

Judgment breads competition.  Competition is a victory or a success at the expense of another’s loss or failure.  When there is a loser, the self-esteem that is achieved is not from within, but acquired by the power struggle within the conflict.  In a war scenario, the worst case scenario, the victor might obtain land, resources or an obscure idea of power but always at the expense of others lives. 

Competition is a struggle.   With any struggle comes injury.  Injury is an understandable component of competition and a sign that not all is well.  Competition also encourages the sense of “me versus them”. The sense of being removed and not connected, separate and unlike the enemy,  alone or left out and different. 

Consider the competition between two hypothetical companies.  Lets call them Pear and MacroHard.  The goal is the same for both competing companies; to create the best product for the consumer.  Throughout the process ideas are kept secret with a lot of energy spent to keep those ideas hidden.  Products are laden with errors, both making the same mistakes and spending equal time self correcting.  Finally the products are released and the consumers choose a victor.  Pear wins the hearts and minds of the consumer with their product and MacroHard is declared the looser.  MarcoHard shuts downs operations and either gives up or starts over with a new product.  All of the energy, good intention and investment provided by MacroHard is, for the most part, in vain and lost.

MacroHard and Pear need the same thing.  They both strive for mastery, respect and self-esteem.   Neither achieved the self-esteem they fought for.

COMPARISON:

Comparison can be a source of inspiration.  The achievements of others can inspire new ideas or methods.  Comparison can be a source of learning.  Mistakes others have made in their process can help with better or more efficient tactics toward the goal.  And with comparison comes a connection, a sense of unity and togetherness toward a common goal of growth and self-esteem.  Information is shared, ideas are found and new ideas are realized. 

I once had the honor of working with two brilliant psychologists, renowned in their field for human behavior.  I was part of a study that induced reactions from subjects under a given circumstance.  I would act and react according to the studies parameters and the subjects would react accordingly.  I was, at the time, a recent graduate with a degree in psychology and just looking for a job.  The doctors would consult with me throughout the study and listen to my opinions and ideas with undivided attention and interest.  I gave them a few ideas that inspired them to come up with new theories and approaches.  They didn't judge me by my youth and obvious ignorance within the field of psychology; they bettered their own understanding of human behavior by comparing their thoughts with my own, regardless of our obvious gap in knowledge and experience.

There is no difference between you or I or that person that just walked by on the street, or drove their car through the drive through, or washed your windows or cooked your food, or the person who provided you a service.

Everyone has the same needs: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualization. Once our basics needs are met by all, a colossal achievement in and of itself, esteem and self-actualization can too be realized.   

The higher needs, the pinnacle of all of human need are self-esteem and self-actualization.  This can be achieved by all, if we work together and learn from each other.  If we stop judgment and competition and replace it with comparisons and contrasting ideas, working in tandem with each other, we will all gain what we need; self-actualization...also known as transcendence. 

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

My opinion on being a parent

I am a parent.  My daughter is a happy, carefree, confident and healthy little girl.  There is not much left to do with this wonderful little human, except for a few very important things.
She is going to make a lot of mistakes.  She's already made several, though at 5 years old her mistakes are not punishable by law and best to keep it that way.  She chose to eat all of the jellybeans for dessert instead of saving some for the next day.  She found out the next day she had no dessert due to her choice the previous night.  She emptied the bookshelf of all its contents, even though the Ipad would be taken away and Strawberry Shortcake would have to wait a day.  She didn't learn the consequence to her action the first, second or third time, but eventually she got to understand the idea of consequence.
I read her stories at night, play with her after dinner (we enjoy building forts and spying on Mommy, though my protruding legs usually gives us away), we laugh, dance and have tickle parties.  I'm very ticklish and through the miracle of genetics, she is too.
I love my daughter and because I love her I understand that she is her own person and not an extension of myself.  She is not my future, as my father would often describe me to his friends in moments of pride.  She is her own future.  Her future is hers to make of it what she will.
In order for her to make a future she will enjoy I need to stay out of her way.  This is what I understand is meant by unconditional love.  Unconditional love is an idea rarely executed, though the hope to do so is a parents idealistic intention.  It's not easy to love without return.  It's not easy to truly believe that loving someone for the sake of loving them is all there is to do.
Conditions are established early on.  "Isn't she pretty."  "He is so smart."  "She is so talented at the violin, a prodigy for sure."  These are, believe it or not, conditions.  "I love you."  "Please clean up your toys."  "Do your best."  "Remember that your choice now will have a consequences later,"  are unconditional.
Many parents now a days believe that building a child's confidence with praise as children is essential for self confidence later in life.  But the lesson they are learning is that without being pretty, smart and inherently talented, they will not receive the same admiration, smile, display of pride or love they got when the first heard those words.
I will always offer my daughter support and congratulations when she has succeeded in anything she has worked toward.  She started picking out her own clothes early on, and though I wouldn't choose for her to wear two mismatched dresses with tights or leggings (I can never tell the difference),  I would certainly allow it and praise her choice later.  I would praise not because she made a choice, but because her choice was actually really good.  No kidding, I'm not even sure how she does it half the time, but what I think of as mismatched usually turns out very well on her little frame.
I also set my standards for myself as an example.  She knows now that Daddy needs to finish what he has started before moving on to something else.  She doesn't always choose to finish what she's started, and I don't discredit her choice, but she'll she me complete a project and witness my joy in the finished product.  Nothing to obscure, usually something like creating an elevator with tinker toys.  We both enjoy engineering type activities...I mentioned the fort?
My daughter does happen to be beautiful, smart and talented.  Though I would never praise those ideas for the sake of it.  I praise her choice of clothing or what she has decided to do with her curly hair for the day.  I praise her hard work and anxiety free ability to test well.  And I let her teach me ballet without the leggings or tight.
I'll always make sure she wears a helmet when she rides her scooter and looks both ways several times before she crosses the road.  I will always hug her when she cries and I will even let her see me cry when I'm sad.  I will listen when she talks, regardless of what it is, and I'll only answer a question if she asks me one.  I will not preach and pretend I am without flaw.  I will show her my mistakes and how I overcome them.  I will love my little girl for who she is and who she decides to be not for what I think she should become.

None of it really matters....NONE

Does any of it really matter?  Life is a span of years full of experiences, quantified subjectively.  This is your identity.  You might have a belief or faith that will extend your life into a different dimension once your body ceases to function.  The idea is sound and full of promise, there is no contest.  Some of those experiences are from your own life and some are the experiences through stories of others.  These stories will give way to the promise of eternal life, an existence beyond that of the senses, an existence that extends beyond the material world.   This however is not about that life, the one beyond the material world.  This is about this life, the one that is based in the here and now, what was and what will be.  The life that exists because you think it exists and therefore it does. 

            There is a quest for purpose in existence.  Those that have yet to find a purpose rely on feelings of malcontent to drive them into a purpose.  There are a limited amount of purposes.  In total there is marriage, children, family, job, love, sex, money, items or things, religion, journey or quest, answers, conflict, destruction, growth, life and death.  When a purpose is found there is a sense of satisfaction.  There is a feeling of meaning to life.  However, with or without purpose, life is meaningless.  Finding meaning in life is as arbitrary as finding meaning in death. 

            Some already understand this, yet the reason for their understanding is misguided.  The assumption that God has the answers and meanings for existence is the misguided conclusion.  God will show you the way or God works in mysterious ways is another way of saying that we have no idea what the meaning is.  We have no grasp of the meaning or reason behind the experiences in life.   Putting meaning on something meaningless is false.

            Life is a list of experiences and those experiences and paths are either chosen or predetermined.  It doesn’t really matter which, be that the path is a path and nothing more.  The path of life fill with experiences, either subjectively good or bad, and then the paths come to an end. 

            There are an immeasurable number of paths, each as unique as the person taking, will take, and have taken in all of history, past, present and future.  Some of those paths where recorded and preserved up to the present time as a lesson or guide as to what path is most sound.  For the vast majority the path is quantified in a number.  For example, the hundreds of thousands that died of the plague prior to vaccination, the millions that died prior to genocide and human rights laws passed by the United Nations and the countless others that just died at some point along their path.  Those unmarked graves, forever compost under a skyscraper or urban shopping center. 

            There have been many remarkable paths taken by individuals that have lead us toward longer living, less pain and fewer crimes against humanity.  For the most part the path is considered an upward climb toward fame, fortune, an idea of power and notoriety.  But one thing still remains the same; the path ends for everyone at some point.

            Some of these previous paths have had an impact.  Paths blazed to inspire and notable enough to have followers. However the followers of those paths followed along a path already taken, making the path nothing more than one less in the countless possibility. 

            Everything that exists will cease to exist.  Everything that will come into existence will eventually also ceases to exist.   

            The big picture is bigger than our imaginations can comprehend.  There is no limit to the picture.  It spans out into a time yet to come, so distant that only scientific assumptions can be made regarding the time when the sun will swallow the earth.   It will be at this point that all that existed along with all that will exist will come to its final end.  There will no longer be an existence that is quantifiable within our human limitations.  Minerals and elements will continue to form and collapse, but consciousness will cease and no more paths will be blazed, or followed.

            So what is it that keeps us going and not drive us into an collective jump off the figurative bridge?  Ignorance, or ignoring, the one fact that is so unwavering that it can never be denied.  The path will come to an end.  Maybe today, tomorrow, a year or 50 years from now the path will end.  In time there will be no record, no reason for your existence what so ever.  This is only a depressing thought and lacking in optimism using judgment and ignoring the truth. 

            Countless organisms have come and gone with more to follow.  We are all in the middle, beginning or the end, relatively speaking, of the coming and going of organisms that have, are and will exist. 

            There may be a time when existence reaches some pinnacle of enlightenment.  In order for this to occur, all of the countless paths must come to one point.  This may occur and the effects could be incredibly dramatic, but in order for that to happen the idea of reality needs to turn upside down.  All that is assumed about individuality needs to be reversed.  Most importantly, there will not be one person at the root of this.  There begins the first step in turning reality upside down, to cease with the idea of individuality.  One path will not lead the way for others to follow.  With all of recorded and assumed existence there has never been a path followed by so many to alter the path of existence.  There have been some trailblazers as mentioned before that has acquired quite a following.  Some helpful, so disastrous, but all those paths constitute a following, not a convergence

            This occurrence, if ever even possible, will not happen within a quantifiable amount of time.  Though we are all genetically similar, there are too many differences.  Let alone our inability for pure communication, the diversities are vast.  From our paths being so diverse, to our belief, understandings of existence, faith and simple proximity to one another all of which constitute roadblocks toward this pinnacle of existence.

            I was born and will die.  I have had and will continue to have experiences separate from anyone else.  I will be forgotten. 

            Before my mother was born, my grandmother, who is now suffering from dementia, was married to a man that died in World War II.  At the same time her first husband died in that war, her only son also died.  No one alive today, included my confused grandmother, remembers anything of that boy.  That boy traveled a very short path before its end.  That boy was born and died and is forgotten.  Nothing about that boy, me or you is exceptional.   The only difference being the length and therefore a quantifiable amount of experiences.  
            My experiences have included love, pain, joy and sorrow, but these events are simple addition to the experiences of other quantifiable list of experiences that have no value outside of me.  If that man didn't die and my grandmother didn't meet my grandfather and gave birth to my mother and if she hadn't overcome her near drowning experience induced by her cousin, I might never have been able to walk my own path.  If this did happen, all of existence would be the same.  My birth, most likely, did not impact Mark Zuckerburg’s creation of Facebook.

            Beliefs of what constitutes reality have changed and will continue to change as drastically as from the past to the present.  It was acceptable for a doctor to smoke while examining a patient a few years ago, now it considered absurd.  Wearing a bikini was against the law a few years back, now it’s legal for a woman to be topless in the state of New York.  It was also acceptable to buy and sell human beings, while that hasn't changed at least there is a law against it now. 

            Change will always happen, not necessarily for the better, but it will happen all the same.    

            My father has had a long life, relatively speaking, and he will die.  He is not sick, just old according to surveys of life expectancy.  He might be able to see my 5 year old daughter graduate high school, but that would be about as far as his path will lead.  He is constantly living in fear.  He is worried about money, though he owns over a million in real estate across the eastern seaboard.  He hasn't come to terms with the fact that his life, his path, is merely full of experiences that will soon come to an end.  There must be something more, he wonders.  He is a solitary man, yet social and charismatic and loved by all of his vast family and friends.  Yet he is miserable.  He fathered two sons; both accepted within society’s standards, he has a loving and patient wife yet has a feeling of impending doom.  He has not accepted the fact that his path will end and eventually he will be forgotten.  No one can escape death.  By trying to ignore and escape the inevitable he is burdened with sadness.

            Eventually, there might come a time when all of existence is on the same path.  Chosen or predetermined to be on that path.  With that will come an inexplicable union of consciousness.  Until then, or if then will ever be a reality, we will all walk a path, full of independent experiences that will lead no where.  There should be no judgment of the fact.