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SITE: HUMAN WELL-BEING

★ “Maslow 2.0” post by Turil Cronburg, 4/18/10
Fulfilling human needs can be thought of as the matter & energy requirements of each developmental stage, created by giving & receiving interactions. Each pyramid LEVEL ⬆️ of needs indicates what a person’s motivations & behaviors are generally like – the combination of personality traits.

😴 Physical : needs of one’s own body, 0-1
🧡 Emotional: of all members of one’s intimate group, 2-3
🔎 Intellectual: of members of one’s community, ie. society, 4-7
🔆 Spiritual : the broad spectrum of needs of all living things, Apex

Consciousness is complex because it’s based on what someone is most focused on at any given time, fed mainly by the various arts of  the cerebral cortex, the outer surface of the brain. At first, as a baby, we have only a very limited awareness of our environment, but it’s still real & valid. With growth, we can pay attention to more & more PPT (people, places, things).

★ Cronburg visualizes human development as FRACTAL diagrams ⬇️, in binary form, showing the complex process of consciousness-growth, starting with pre-birth.
It’s a combination of input & output interactions between the Self (red) and family & close friends (green), human society (light blue), & all the species of Earth (dark blue).  Article: “Is Consciousness Fractal?”

0 = fetus to birth : AWARE of self-input
1 = birth to 9 months : aware of self-output
10 = 9 months to age 2 : how others’ (family/friends) outputs meet internal needs
11 = 2-3 : how self & others’ outputs combine to create new things (connections, experiences)
100 = 3-7 : how self & others’ needs are met by society

101 = 7-13 : self-outputs + society’s needs, used to meet those of others
110 = 13-19 : others’ outputs + society’s, to meet self-needs
111 = 19-35 : how self, others & society’s outputs combine to make new things (community, projects, art….)

1000 = 35-60 : aware that the planet’s outputs meet self, others & society’s needs
1001 = 60-102 : aware of how one’s own outputs can meet the planet’s needs!

‘SATISFACTION with LIFE INDEX‘ by Adrian G. White,  (U of Leicester, Eng).
It was a collection of data from a metastudy, wanting to show life satisfaction in different nations, by directly asking how happy people feel, as well as considering social & economic factors.

Subjective measures of well-being correlated most strongly with health, wealth, & access to basic education.
In 2006, Denmark ranked #1, USA at #23, & Burundi the lowest

📌Edward Diener (U of ILL) helped create a Gallup poll survey on well-being, with 60,865 participants from 123 countries (2005-2010). Qs covered:
▪︎ Basic needs (food, shelter) /  safety / social needs (love, support) / respect / mastery / & autonomy.
▪︎ 3 measures of Well-being : life evaluation (a person’s view of his or her life as a whole) / / positive feelings (day-to-day instances of joy or pleasure) / / & negative feelings (everyday experiences of sorrow, anger, or stress).

Responses clearly indicated that Maslow’s basic list of needs does apply to everyone, regardless of culture. Diener commented that while our most basic needs tend to get the most attention when we don’t have them, we don’t need to fulfill them all before benefiting from higher level needs.”
EXP: Even when we’re hungry, we can still be happy being with friends (#4 over #1)

The human brain is a complex system with parallel processes running all the time, so that many different drives can be active at the same time.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all activities lead to well-being, which are called ‘pseudo-needs’. They’re unhealthy drives leading to behaviors which never bring mature, permanent satisfaction (addictions, people-pleasing, rescuing, isolating, being controlling….. ).

Diener’s study suggests that only when looking back on the quality of our lives do the basic needs become important indicators of well-being.
— Re. Troubles:  they come mainly from lack of esteem (3), lack of freedom (2), & lack of nourishment (1), in that order
— For everyday Satisfaction: interpersonal needs – such as love & respect (3 & 4) – are most important.
Healthy human needs work independently, & like vitamins, all are necessary…. “Since each of them correlates to certain aspects of happiness, all are important – all the time.”

Martin Seligman, (U of Penn) says governments should “focus away from monetary measures, especially in light of Diener & Tay’s findings – that income has little impact on day-to-day happiness, & is significant for well-being only in so far as it allows for basic needs to be met.”

NEXT: Maslow updates #2