So that's all for now. It's great to be back! I'll post again soon once I've cobbled together the lessons I learned from blogging about 100 philosophy thought experiments. Hopefully I'll be able to capture just how much that changed my outlook on life. Stay tuned for that!
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Replacing Maslow With An Evolutionary Hierarchy of Needs
However ugly the parts appear, the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand / Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history ... for contemplation or in fact ... / Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is / Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.
--Excerpt from The Answer, a poem by Robinson Jeffers, 1936.
In 2018, the world will celebrate the 75th anniversary of Abraham Maslow’s classic paper published in Psychological Review that proposed a hierarchical approach to human motivation. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — that pyramid constructed on a base of physiological needs, and proceeding upwards through safety and security, love and belonging, and self-esteem, before topping out with self-actualization — is well known to millions who have had any exposure to the field of psychology. Fulfill these needs, and you will be a fulfilled person. Philosophers would say you were flourishing, imbued with eudaimonia, and a shining example of well-being. From a modern evolutionary perspective, however, this is no longer enough.....
"Ever since Darwin’s revolutionary idea came along, science has rather rapidly filled in the details of our interrelatedness. Yet much of philosophy, law, politics, and psychology are still focused on the realm of the individual, arguing even over how best to support any flourishing there. That, however, is an impoverished view."
"It’s only when our absolute highest priorities are concerned with the evolution of life in general that we can find ways for all of life to flourish together and ensure its long-term survival."
"It is incumbent upon us, for individual and collective reasons, to not only understand Maslow and other psychologists’ hierarchies of human needs, but we must also expand these hierarchies and adapt them to portray a wider and fully evolutionary view as well. As Darwin himself said, there is grandeur in this view of life."