DEFICIENCY LEVEL LIVING

After writing Meta Reflection #12 on the media’s focus on the dark side of human nature, I had several emails. Some asked questions about living life at the deficiency level, some wanted to explore what the deficiency level living means, how to determine if one is living there, etc. Because of these great questions, I have written this follow-up Meta Reflection.

To the extent that we are biological beings, we all live to some extent at the deficiency level, and always will. That is, we have lower level needs for surviving, being safe and protected, experiencing love and affection, and knowing that we count and are important in our social contexts. The problem is exclusively living at these lower deficiency levels. If we are exclusively living at the deficiency levels it means that we are not getting those needs met. This is often the case when we are just beginning life and when we are first launching out on our own. Having the coping skills to handle these demands of our organism and to cope effectively is the first prerequisite. If we are not able to cope with these demands—we feel deficient, driven, even desperate.

But it is not just a matter of having the basic coping skills, it is making sure that we do not semantically over-load these needs. And being human beings who are a semantic class of life, this is a significant problem. We can and do easily semantically overload the human needs by giving them too much meaning or worse, by giving them distorted meanings. When we do that, then we are psycho-eating, psycho-sexing, psycho-spending, psycho-earning, psycho-securing, psycho-connecting, psycho-esteeming.

What does that mean? It means that we are attempting to use the lower deficiency needs (food, sex, security, love, affection, etc.) to attain psychological values— meaningfulness, contribution, significance, justice, music, beauty, goodness, long-term purpose, etc. We are eating for “the good life,” reward, love, fulfillment, connection, de-stressing, etc. This is developed more fully in Games Slim and Fit People Play. We are earning and spending money for “being right,” success, power, control, self-esteem, etc.

And, semantically over-loading lower needs creates a distortion in our drives, in our motivation, so that we get stuck at the lower deficiency levels. Then we do not self-actualize to become an authentic, real person fully alive/ fully human and fully functioning. That’s why deficiency mentality and motivation then drives us to ruthlessly compete, put others down, are ugly and hurtful to others, seek revenge, take insult easily, and live in the darker side of human nature.

So, obviously, first it is critical for your self-actualization to know how to effectively live at the lower deficiency level. Maslow suggested that you be what you are—be a good animal. Have your needs, satisfy them with “true satisfiers,” gratify them, then move on. Move on up to the higher abundant level needs.

Next question: How do we live in the deficiency realm as we must in the workday world with all of its bad news, negativity, lies, fears, ugliness, betrayal, scandal, cheating and evil? From the perspective of Self-Actualization Psychology, the answer is to live at the self-actualization being- level integrating the being-values into oneself and then using this abundance and these meta- motivations to then focus on solving these problems.

In this, Maslow constantly spoke about the difference between real problems and pseudo- problems. He noted that there are many, many pseudo-problems that occupy the minds, hearts, and activities of people—pseudo-problems. And we create most of our pseudo-problems by semantically over-loading something with too much or distorted meaning. We create the pseudo- problem of — failure (what if I fail at...?), disapproval (what if they don’t like me?), perfectionism (what if it is not perfect?), etc.

So what are real problems? The ultimate problem is the question of self-actualization: What are my innate gifts and talents? How can I unleash my highest and best potentials? What do I have that’s best for contributing? How can we as a race (the human race) create a civilization out of all of our cultures that respects the basic dignity and value of every person? How can we as a race not kill ourselves? How can we create more just and humane cultures? How can we transform work so that it synergizes profit with well- being? How can we support medical research for improving the health and vitality of people, curing crippling diseases? How can we design an education system so it turns children on for being passionate life-long learners? How can we create self-actualizing businesses? Self-actualizing media? Self-actualizing politicians? Self-actualizing leaders?

In all of this problems activate self-actualization. And that means that solving problems lies at the heart of our purpose as humans. And that brings us back to self-actualization creativity— which is the subject of the next Meta Reflections.