LIVING LIFE AT TOO LOW A LEVEL

At what level are you living your life? Strange question, right? The level of life here refers to the motivational levels that Abraham Maslow identified in his classic work, Motivation and Personality (1954/ 1970). There are two fundamental levels.

The Deficiency Level: This level of needs that drive us refer to all of the physical and psychological needs that make up the first four levels of his hierarchy: survival, safety and stability, love and affection (social), and one’s sense of importance about oneself (self). The mechanism that drives the needs at this level in all of these dimensions of human experience is lack. When we lack, we have a deficiency and from that deficiency we are driven to gratify the need. This is the basic form of “motivation” that we all experience in life and it is related to the requirements of life for being able to function decently well. And at this level, when you gratify the need sufficiently (not perfectly, not at 100%), the need goes away. The emotional drive of deficiency disappears. When it is not met sufficiently, then the need becomes desperate. And that’s when we tend to do things that violate and damage ourselves and others.

The Abundance or Being Level: This level transcends the lower level of the D-needs and operates by an entirely different mechanism. These are the uniquely human needs and begin with knowledge, meaning, truth, justice, beauty, music, mathematics, order, excellence, contribution, making a difference, etc. Unlike the deficiency needs that go away when gratified, these grow and abound when gratified. Unlike the deficiency needs that are instrumental and serve a higher purpose, these needs are non-instrumental. They are valuable and precious in and of themselves. Unlike the deficiency needs that are means to some other end, these are an end in themselves. For that reason, Maslow called them B-needs (Being).

Maslow also noted in his extensive studies and research in this area that the lower-needs are needs that we share with the higher intelligence animals. The social animals need all of the D-needs just as we do. None of those needs are uniquely human. They are animal needs. Regarding this, Maslow urged, “Be a good animal! Have healthy appetites! And go beyond these needs to those that are the truly human needs.

So, again, at what level are you living? Well, the question is a bit tricky because you, like me, are living at all of those levels. And that’s because all of those needs are operational in you. They are requirements for your physical survival and your social and psychological well-being. The question this is this: How well are you coping with these needs? How healthily are you gratifying the deficiency needs so that you are moving on to the human being needs?

The problem is that without instincts, unlike the animals, we do not automatically and intuitively know what the impulses that drive us are, what they stand for, and how to gratify them. The animals do; we do not. That’s why knowledge and meaning and truth are among the most fundamental

being needs. We need accurate knowledge so that we can sufficiently gratify the needs. If we do not have truth to do so, then we can create neurotic needs.

Neurotic needs is how we get stuck at a lower level. In this case, the mis-information distorts the drive and typically we create addictions. Typical also is that we are trying to fulfill a self- actualization need through a gratification that is designed for a lower need. For example, a person may seek love by using food as a gratification. “Food” is endowed with too much meaning— it is love, the good life, success, relaxation, etc. Now instead of food satisfying us, gratifying the drive for it, we eat more and more and cannot get enough. We push through the natural thresholds eating more and more and more. We can’t stop. To stop denies all of these “secondary gains” and psychological values that have been connected to it.

D-needs and their drives go away with adequate gratification. If it doesn’t go away, we are probably not gratifying the actual drive (hunger) but a psychological drive that may be a self-actualization drive. So the pattern of D-needs— the more, the less —doesn’t apply. What’s operational is the B- need pattern— the more, the more. With the D-needs, the more you truly gratify the need, the less it drives you. With the B-needs, the more you truly gratify the need, the strong it becomes. It becomes more and more.

This distinction enables us to understand what’s wrong with ourselves and others. When a person’s drives are driving, driving, driving them and there’s no satisfaction. When a person is singing, “I get no satisfaction!” regarding the lower needs, then that person’s needs are contaminated by the higher needs. That is the person is trying to self-actualize at too low a level and with too low a need. And that’s why by over-loading the meaning of the need with too much meaning and/or distorted meaning— the need becomes neurotic.

This is the factor by which many people semantically over-load various lower needs, animal needs, so that they become addictions. And when they load it with distorted meanings, then their semantics can create “drives” that feel right and natural and intuitive to them— but that are completely distorted and destructive. And knowing this mechanism that creates the misery informs us about how to correct the problem: we reverse the semantic over-loading and we correct the distorted semantics. Sometimes this process involves reframing; sometimes it involves unlearning, sometimes it involves setting and holding healthy frames.

Why all the killings? Typically people are living at the D-need level and have distorted meanings so that they are lacking the sufficient coping skills to meet their needs in an effective and healthy way. Within their map of the world “killing” other human beings is a legitimate response to their frustrations. Solution? Well, first and foremost help them meet their legitimate needs in accurate ways. At least then they will not be operating from the desperation of unfulfilled needs. Then, update their data-base of information (their mental map) about all of the levels of their needs and how to gratify them healthily.