Seventy years ago, Abraham Maslow gave us the hierarchy of human needs, and told us that it was human nature to reach for the stars, once our needs for security and love and community were met.
Blogging for Scientific American, Scott Barry Kauffman has updated Maslow's message. What do you think? How are you doing? How are the people doing whom you care most about?
- Continued Freshness of Appreciation (Sample item: "I can appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.")
- Acceptance (Sample item: "I accept all of my quirks and desires without shame or apology.")
- Authenticity (Sample item: "I can maintain my dignity and integrity even in environments and situations that are undignified.")
- Equanimity (Sample item: "I tend to take life's inevitable ups and downs with grace, acceptance, and equanimity.")
- Purpose (Sample item: "I feel a great responsibility and duty to accomplish a particular mission in life.")
- Efficient Perception of Reality (Sample item: "I am always trying to get at the real truth about people and nature.")
- Humanitarianism (Sample item: "I have a genuine desire to help the human race.")
- Peak Experiences (Sample item: "I often have experiences in which I feel new horizons and possibilities opening up for myself and others.")
- Good Moral Intuition (Sample item: "I can tell 'deep down' right away when I've done something wrong.")
- Creative Spirit (Sample item: "I have a generally creative spirit that touches everything I do.")
"The goal of identity (self-actualization . . .) seems to be simultaneously an end-goal in itself, and also a transitional goal, a rite of passage, a step along the path to the transcendence of identity. This is like saying its function is to erase itself. Put the other way around, if our goal is the Eastern one of ego-transcendence and obliteration, of leaving behind self-consciousness and self-observation, . . . then it looks as if the best path to this goal for most people is via achieving identity, a strong real self, and via basic-need-gratification."
-- Abraham Maslow
