This blogger can personally vouch for the
truthfulness of what this posting reports.
When he was younger, as a young adult and supported by a culture that
prevailed in those years – and he claims is still prominent today – he saw life
as a journey to fulfil self-defined aims and goals. The general direction was to attain success over
what personal challenges were currently present on the way to achieving
life-long ambitions.
Some of those ambitions were about personal
life – a successful marriage and parenthood – and some about how he advanced in
general society – a successful career.
Many would argue that all of this was not determined by this younger
person. It was just what was prevalent
among the American population, and he accepted it as what should be or what was
normal for a person with his income and family background. Therefore, little meaningful reflection was involved.
That
general perspective on how most people mature was more or less supported by
general psychological and sociological models that enjoyed general followship
at that time. For example, there was
Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model that traced how one would be progressively
motivated, assuming initial motives or needs were satisfied.
People start with basic physiological needs and
advance, with the satisfaction of interim needs, toward self-actualization. Loving and belonging were only intermediate
needs and for many not totally satisfied, meaning that most would be stymied short
of experiencing the ultimate need for self-actualization.[1]
This
blogger’s expertise is not along these lines; he is not questioning the
validity of Maslow’s model. Take this
offering as merely a questioning exercise that suggests a different emphasis –
from a self-centered focus to a more communal focus. Initially, this blogger found Maslow’s model
to be powerful. But he has gone through a
basic reevaluation of how one should lead one’s life and although he doesn’t
dismiss Maslow’s view, he qualifies it.
In his former view, this blogger was ensconced
in a behavioral – ala B. F. Skinner – view of motivation but has shifted
to a more communal bias which highlights federated relationships with those people
with whom he interacts. Those
relationships range from family and friends to people he encounters in everyday
life. Overall, he presupposes that those
he encounters, at some level, are partners in this thing called social life.
And
he finds, in his readings and research, that the general popular literature has
shifted in this direction as well. More
and more writers are opting for the utilization of a more communal language or
perspective. One such writer is the
journalist, David Brooks. In 2019, he
came out with a book, The Second Mountain, which presents an other-centered
message – one that places in importance the needs one has in establishing and
maintaining strong interpersonal relationships, from one-on-one encounters to overall
communal living.
Amazon, the bookseller, summarizes this book
with the following: “On the second
mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth
wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not
independence. They surrender to a life
of commitment.”[2] Yes, this depiction does not technically counter
Maslow’s ultimate motivation, self-actualization, but perhaps further defines
what that means.
Actually, this blogger thinks this description
was what Maslow was arguing since he, Maslow, describes this final motivational
stage as being beyond ego. It is toward
who one truly is. There is the notion
that everyone is truly a social being and one can find a lot of professional counseling
assuming this aspect of human nature. If
so, self-actualization would presuppose a recognition of this element of
needing others and cater to satisfying whatever that element’s requisites are.
Perhaps the entire question boils down to a
matter of degree. How other-centered
does one need to be in order to attain one’s happiness or contentment? Brooks claims that his book is to, first,
make the argument that people need to recognize this need, i.e., to serve a
cause larger than oneself, and second, to instruct people on how to accomplish
this aim. And here is where his book gets
its basic focus.
Brooks writes:
Our society suffers from a crisis of connection,
a crisis of solidarity. We live in a
culture of hyper-individualism. There is
always a tension between self and society, between the individual and the
group. Over the past sixty years we have
swung too far toward the self. The only
out is to rebalance, to build a culture that steers people toward relation,
community, and commitment – the things we most deeply yearn for, yet undermine
with our hyper-individualistic way of life.[3]
And this becomes conscious for a person as that
person strives toward relationships not based on concrete rewards, but on
satisfaction of some love interest for a vocation, a spouse and/or family
members, a philosophy or belief (as with a religion), and/or a community.
As
with most human quests or ambitions, some people are very good – even outstanding
– at satisfying these aims. Most, though,
can only achieve adequacy. What is
important is that the effort is made to be communal, collaborative, and
cooperative with others who are engaged in striving for their conscious goals;
that can include merely making it till tomorrow.
What everyone can do is
to set related goals according to high standards. Yes, tomorrow is important, but lasting and
meaningful relationships over time enrich and fill out a substantial life for
oneself. And, with high standards, if
one falls short, Brooks argues, it will be because of one’s talents and
abilities, not due to setting impoverished ideals.
[1] For example, Saul Mcleod, “Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Needs,” Simply Psychology, November 24, 2023, accessed January 13, 2024,
URL: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html. This site introduces an even higher need, that being
“transcendence needs.” Here, according
to this source, “they represent the human desire to connect with higher
reality, purpose, or the universe.”
Perhaps this is more in line with communal needs and ambitions.
[2] Amazon advertisement for The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, accessed
January 13, 2024, URL: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Mountain-David-Brooks/dp/0812993268.
[3] David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York,
NY: Random House), xvi-xvii. If one goes back sixty years as this quote
indicates, one is in the year 1964. This
blog claims that the nation shifted in its basic view of governance and
politics to the natural rights view in the late 1940s. Its palpable influence would take some time
to hold sway in how people behaved and that might coincide with the late 1950s
to early 1960s.
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