Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Scott Barry Kaufman
- Publish Date: April 7, 2020
- Language: English
- Genre: Humanistic Psychology
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 9 MB
- Pages: 432
- Price: Free
- ISBN: 0143131206
Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (1954)
While overall the world has dramatically improved in many ways—people are living
longer, healthier, freer, and more peacefully1—many people around the world in the
first quarter of the twenty-first century still find themselves living in an unpredictable,
chaotic world, and for many, chaos invades their personal environment. In the United
States alone, around ten million Americans working full time are still living below the
official poverty line. Basic fundamental needs such as housing and health care are in crisis
for large swaths of Americans, despite the striking growth in incomes of the top 1 percent.
Indeed, over thirty-three million Americans do not have health insurance, and over half of
Americans do not even have $400 on hand to help deal with a catastrophe.
2
As the author Ruth Whippman has pointed out, we have created a societal narrative
around health and wellness that essentially inverts Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, placing
self-actualization as a viable alternative to these fundamentals, instead of something that is
built on a strong foundation of safety and security. In her article “Where Were We While
the Pyramid Was Collapsing? At a Yoga Class,” Whippman writes, “We are focusing on the
tip of Maslow’s pyramid at the clear expense of its base.”
3
While Maslow never actually created a pyramid to represent his theory (see
Introduction), he repeatedly emphasized the need for the most fundamental needs to be
met in order for one to even have the opportunity to realize their full potential. Maslow’s
own working-class upbringing as the eldest son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and being
the target of constant anti-Semitic bullying as a child, influenced his lifelong focus on social
change. One of his students who took his class in the 1960s noted that Maslow fiercely
advocated for the reduced-price meals in schools as a way of reducing the roadblocks to the
healthy growth and development of impoverished children.
4
Modern-day science makes clear that unpredictability has far-reaching consequences
for the lives we can envision and create for ourselves. The need for safety, and its
accompanying needs for stability, certainty, predictability, coherence, continuity, and trust
in the environment, is the base upon which all the others are fulfilled. The need for safety is
tied to the struggle to make sense of experiences and a motivation to gain control over
violated expectations. Having a safe base allows a person to take risks and explore new
ideas and ways of being, while also allowing the opportunity to become who you truly want
to become. In the absence of that base, people become overly dependent on the protection,
love, affection, and esteem of others, which can compromise growth, development, and
meaning in life.
The need for safety is tied to a particular form of meaning in life. Psychologists have
identified three different forms of meaning: coherence, purpose, and mattering.
5
Purpose
involves a motivation to realize future-oriented and valued life goals. Mattering consists of
the extent to which people feel that their existence and actions in the world are significant,
important, and valuable.
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