Text A The Needs That Drive Us All
All living creatures are driven by the basic need to stay alive and reproduce so that the species will continue. As creatures have evolved from simple to complex, they have developed additional basic needs ... Humans not only need (1) to survive and reproduce, but also (2) to belong and love, (3) to gain power, (4) to be free and (5) to have fun. All five needs are built into our genetic structure as instructions for how we must attempt to live our lives. All are important and must be reasonably satisfied if we are to fulfill our biological destiny. I italicize the need for power because, unlike the other four needs that are shared to some extent by many higher animals, the way we continually struggle for power in every aspect of our lives seems uniquely human.
We are also born with no choice but to feel pain when a need is frustrated, and pleasure when it is satisfied. The quicker and more severe the frustration, the more pain we feel; the quicker and deeper the satisfaction, the more pleasure we experience.
Simple survival needs like hunger, thirst, and sexual desire are relatively clear-cut, and we quickly learn what particular discomfort is attached to the denial of these basic needs. When we attempt to satisfy the non-essential psychological needs, such as belonging, fun, freedom, and especially power, we run into more difficulty. The need for power is particularly difficult to satisfy because in many cultures the mores of the culture condemn those who openly strive for it. Even politicians try to appear humble, emphasizing how much they wish to serve and how little they want to tell us what to do.
But regardless of cultural prejudices, power itself is neither good nor bad. In fact, if it were not for the need for power, our whole economy would crumble because almost all that is bought and sold, except for bare necessities, is for the sake of power.
When someone uses his power to help downtrodden people satisfy any of their needs, especially to get some power, this use of power is humane. But history records few examples of people like Martin Luther King, Jr., who used what power he had for the benefit of the powerless. Instead, history is full of tyrants who used their power to hurt people, and the reason that so many of us see power as bad is because so many people have been its victims. But even tyrants tend to talk about power as if it is bad. They preach the virtues of humility because the more people they can persuade to be humble, the more easily they can both preserve and add to the power that they have.
While it is easy to understand that people who strive for power may become dominant and have a better chance to survive, most of us have difficulty accepting that this need is written in our genes. As I have mentioned, culturally we have been taught by those in power to be humble. That their teachings have been largely accepted when what they advocate is so obviously self-serving is a tribute to how effective they have been in getting their message across. But also, because we want power so badly, we often support those who are stronger in the hope that they will share a little of what they have with us. And if they are wise, they do. Successful politicians are masters of this approach and the same expertise is not unknown in business, higher education and even religion.
If you look around in any society, you cannot fail to see the all-pervasive effect of this need. Families band together for power, but if they succeed in becoming very powerful, they tend in almost all cases to fight among themselves for the lion's share of what they have. Rather than go over what seems so obvious, just ask yourself one question: Who do you know who is so completely satisfied with his life that he can go a week without complaining that someone has gotten in the way of what he wanted to do? Most of us cannot get through a day without complaint: To be satisfied with how others have treated us for a week would seem like an eternity.
We are intensely competitive. If we think that we have any chance at all to move beyond bare survival, we are almost all ambitious. We worry about winning, our honor, our pride, our integrity, our desire to be heard, our need to be right, who recognizes us, whether we are achieving enough, whether we are rich enough, good-looking, well-dressed, influential — the list is endless. We are easily jealous, and "stupid" people call us arrogant when all we are is competent. We worry about status, position and whether we have clout. We are constantly trying to avoid those who would coerce us, manipulate us or use us. That we have often been wronged and seek revenge is much on the minds of many of us. Among us, even the humble compete for who can be the humblest of all.
You can decide for yourself whether power is used more for good than for evil, but simply as a genetic need it has no morality. Our needs push us to strive for fulfillment; whether in our attempt to satisfy them we do right or wrong is up to each of us to decide. I am spending so much time explaining this need because it is by far, especially for young people, the most important drive. If students do not feel that they have any power in their academic classes, they will not work in school. The same could also be said for teachers. There is no greater work incentive than to be able to see that your effort has a power payoff.
Freedom, another basic need, is often in conflict with power. The more power you have, even if you use it for my benefit, the less freedom I have. It seems that there has to be a counterforce to power; unbridled power would be destructive to the survival of the species. Therefore, almost everything said about power could also be reworded into the vocabulary of freedom. For example, we may be inherently competitive, but we want to be free to lose without losing too much. And as much as a child may love her parents, she also wants the freedom to branch out on her own. So you can see that freedom can be in conflict not only with power but also with belonging. For example, if you want me around too much, I claim you stifle me, but if you aren't constantly giving me attention, I may claim you don't love me.
Most people, after some thought, have no difficulty accepting that love, power and freedom are as basic as the need to survive. They might, however, question my claim that fun is a basic need. They wonder, do we really need to have fun, and what is it, anyway? It's hard to define, but we all know that fun is associated with laughter, play and entertainment. It's the part of the job that you don't have to do, but doing it may be the best part of the job. It is never serious, but it is often important: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It can be frivolous, but it doesn't have to be. It can be planned, but is much more likely to be spontaneous. It can balance a lot of misery, and it is like a catalyst that makes anything we do better and worth doing again and again.
Not only humans have fun. My observation is that all animals who can make choices as to what to do to fulfill their needs seem at times to have fun. The higher the animal, the more fun. Lower animals, whose behavior is essentially built-in and who do not have much ability to learn, are not involved with fun. If you want a fun pet, you would not choose a turtle.
My guess is that we will survive in direct proportion to how much we can learn. So, driven by the need for fun, we always have a powerful genetic incentive to keep trying to learn as much as we can. Without the relationship between fun and learning we would not learn nearly as much. I realize that we also learn for power, love and freedom, but to satisfy these often requires long-term dedication. It is the immediate fun of learning that keeps us going day by day, especially when we are young and have so much to learn.
Boredom is the opposite of fun. It always occurs when we have to spend time without learning: A monotonous task is always boring unless we can find a way to learn while doing something repetitive, or make the thing we are doing competitive or social, as Tom Sawyer did when he was painting the fence. A prisoner who is actively planning his escape finds his confinement much less oppressive. Anytime we can introduce power, freedom or belonging into a situation, we find it more interesting. And as we do, we also find ourselves learning along the way. |