This is Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. I think it’s a marvelous approach to self-improvement. It was a handout in my Literature-based Research class, but I’ve learned that it embodies the humanist school of psychology, which Maslow founded.
- Physiological: the need to satisfy hunger, thirst, and other bodily preoccupations.
- Safety/security: the need to be out of danger.
- Belongingness: the need for affiliation with others, a sense of being loved or accepted.
- Esteem: the need to gain approval and recognition.
- Cognitive: the need to know, to understand, to explore
- Aesthetic: the need for symmetry, order and beauty.
- Self-actualization: the need to experience self fulfillment, to realize one’s full potential. The self actualizing person is one who is:
- Not afraid of the unknown and can tolerate doubt, uncertainty, and tentativeness that accompany the perception of the new and unfamiliar.
- Not ashamed of his/her human nature with its shortcomings, imperfections, frailties, and weaknesses.
- Not hampered by conventions but does not flout conventions merely for the sake of doing so.
- Missioned-oriented on the basis of an uncoerced sense of responsibility, duty, or obligation.
- Respectful of others and tries to understand their perspectives.
- Attuned to the opportunities of solitude and privacy as well as of social interaction.
- Fully conscious of personal responsibility for actions and for growth, not blaming others or charging others with the task motivation.
- In awe of the wonder of the everyday world and of life’s limitless possibilities.
- Possessed of a deep and unconditional empathy for human beings in general.
- Humble in his/her recognition of what he/she knows in comparison to what could be known and acknowledges others as teachers, respecting everyone as a potential contributor to his/her knowledge.
- Highly ethical and at least intuitively aware of Kant’s famous categorical imperative, which charges us to “Act only according to principles which we can will also to be universal laws.”
- Philosophical and possessed of an unhostile sense of humor
- Visionary but not inclined to impose his/her beliefs on others.
- Alive!
- Self-transcendence: the need to connect to something beyond the self and to move toward a meaningful selflessness through that connectedness.
In my anthropology class last week, this question was raised: Why did God put the Tree with Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden? The question was raised but not answered by either the theist or atheist contingent. I find this to be an important matter in understanding the bible, and i have rarely heard it explained. I venture this argument:
The bible has a convoluted relationship with the notion of man’s free will, but in this case is clear. Without God’s placing some kind of prohibition that could be broken, thereby generating disobedience, their could be no chance to demonstrate choice and free will. Essentially, just like any good scientist, God allowed for a negative outcome, knowing the results would be meaningless without the possibility. It would be like voting for president with only one name on the ballot.
I feel that this is a rarely articulated concept. Anyone heard it put this way before? Where did you hear it?
After much consideration into matter psychological, spiritual and physiological, I have reached a conclusion that has given me a perspective that I find to be a breathtaking correction. I read Oliver Sacks Musicophila last year (my serious first brush with neuroscience) and those seeds slowly germinated until a couple weeks ago, when I had an intense soul searching adventure. As succinctly as I can, I will state it below:
The mind is not a system constructed of abilities and learned behaviors that can be augmented, but rather a collection of inhibitions and barriers that can be systematically removed.
This may not be revolutionary to some people, but in some strange way this revelation has given me a great amount of relief and hope. Can anyone perhaps compare this to an existing philosophy? I’m not aware of any, and this idea seems new to me, but I’m sure someone else has gotten here centuries ago. Not that I would have liked to have been told about prior to now, for I feel that arriving at it on my own makes for a superior mortar in my mind.
About a month ago I got a new job here in Asheville, and I’m really digging it. I’d been at the newspaper for going on 9 years (since I was 16) and felt that I was really beginning to stagnate in my knowledge and in my habits. My mind was constantly about 5 years ahead of what we could actually do, and that depressed me into a kind of chronic stupor.
In my new job, I have already learned things that I had tried to teach myself for years. I’m beginning to learn web design, and to understand the skeleton and flesh and blood of marketing. Other than more money (which can make anyone’s life easier) I feel like I’ve finally got my ducks in a row and some critical mistakes are out of the way. Maybe growing up is just finding out that you like to work more than you like to play. That definition will work for now.
After recently turning 24, I thought it might be an interesting to project to document whatever wisdom I have recently acquired so as to compare year to year now what I was seeing, but how I was seeing it. The nature of these are varied, but that is to be expected; I’m less and less fond of boxes and labels. Here is a by no means complete list.
- Smoking in the bathtub is perfectly safe, except for the cancer.
- Some mistakes are easier done than said.
- Most people have good intentions and lousy methods. Be quick to support them with better methods, and quick to condemn those with truly poor intentions.
- Everyone has their drug of choice. The main types are: Caffeine, Nicotine, Marihuana, Cocaine, or Jesus.
This should be a good tradition; I think it would be healthy for me to remember what I’ve learned from year to year.
Sesamstrasse; Just in case you wondered whether this ever existed.
The real point of this post:
Recent discoveries and accomplishments:
- Some of Emily Dickinson’s poems are absolutely terrible. These, however make excellent country/gospel tunes; “If I could stop one heart from breaking,” is a good example.
- Autodidact
- The Tale of Genji
- Red Guitar
- The Big Lebowski
- “Hillosophy” (folk wisdom, e.g. )
- Getting out of debt — the hard way.
- Purchase of a Victrola! A 1921 VV-50, currently on layaway. Suitcase model.
- Finally acknowledging my inherent materialism, and staging a personal revolution.
- Deduced the difference between kerning and tracking by accident when someone asked me what it was.
“Do your children enjoy jazz music? For I am here to tell you that Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and the whole weed-blowing, ginger-colored lot are merely masquerading as musicians and are in fact agents of evil. Reefer slows down the smokers’ sense of time, allowing them to squeeze in unnecessary “grace notes”, giving this voodoo music the power to hypnotize white women into indulging in unspeakable acts of degradation.”
