Transcendence, Maslow’s Revised Hierarchy of Needs, Jesus, & Jimmy Carter: A Meditation

The Tower of Babylon, Under Construction (Original AI Image)

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a theory of human motivation. In essence, it proposes that people cannot pursue a higher level of achievement on the Pyramid until their needs are being consistently and reliably met at lower, foundational levels.

Essentially, we each build our own tower of life one level at a time.

As published, the pyramid consists of five ties of human needs; each level builds upon the previous.

At the top of the original pyramid is self-actualization, and beyond that prior to his death, Maslow had begun to write about another level beyond mere self-actualization: he had begun to recognize our ability to grow beyond ourselves and achieve transcendence.

Transcendence is the goal of magic(que)(k)al living—surrender to the highest, best inner voice, an embrace of creativity, growth beyond the fearful, protective egoic a state. Mihalyi Czikzenthmihalyi calls it Flow. It also has similarities and parallels with some of the proposed structures of Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintigration, although the two theories are not identical.

Physiological Needs:

The base of Maslow’s pyramid represents basic physiological needs—what the body itself requires to remain alive and survive. These include food, water, shelter, warmth, and rest/sleep.

Even at this foundational level, needs are never static. Human infants are born before they can meet their own physiological needs and must rely on caregivers to provide everything; in later stages of life, physiological needs may also differ from person to person and from time to time. (We’ve all known that person who can thrive on four hours of sleep per night, seemingly unfazed, and also the person who isn’t functional with less than nine hours; other physiological needs follow the same pattern and may change depending on the environment, overall health/wellness, stress, etc.)

Safety Needs:

The second level of the pyramid is safety needs. These include not only physical safety (being free from actual harm and also the threat of physical harm) but also emotional safety and financial security.

Early in life, as children, safety needs might include feeling secure in the home and having parents who provide stability and protection. As teenagers, safety needs might include having a safe and supportive social circle and access to health care. And as adults in a world in which economic structures are tiled, creating a dangerous imbalance between those who are secure and those who are insecure, many people sense deep basic threats to their safety.

Threats to safety impede the ability to function at higher levels. Relationship conflicts, familial discord, and threats of violence in the community also contribute to a lack of energy to do anything other than protect oneself and one’s nearest & dearest.

Love and Belonging

It’s hard to have the energy to offer trust, love, support, and affection when you don’t have the spoons to feed yourself and your family. When we ask, “How did the world get to this point,” we’re really asking “Why can’t we function more consistently at the third level of Maslow’s Heirarchy?”

The third level of the pyramid is love and belonging. It’s the level Jesus of Nazareth spent his entire ministry preaching about—after, of course, he covered physiological needs.

‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25)

This level is about the need for social interaction, love, and affection.

As an infant, love and belonging are primarily fulfilled through bonding with caregivers. As a child, love and belonging might include friendships and social acceptance. As a teenager, this need might include romantic relationships, close friendships, and social support.

Finally, as adults, if we manage to develop our own self-love and create a positive system of support around us, we will find within us enough excess to pour into our communities, creating healing energy that flows outward in a virtuous circle.

Esteem Needs

The fourth level of the pyramid is esteem needs. These include the need for being accurately seen, mirrored, validated and valued by others as well as oneself. This two-way esteem feedback route creates a healthy system of perspective, checks, and balances with one’s highest drives and ambitions as one pursues self-respect, self-esteem, and recognition from others throughout life.

As an infant, esteem needs must be met with consistent, positive reinforcement from caregivers. As a child, esteem needs can be met through personal pursuits (artistic, gaming, sports, hobbies, academics, social activities, service, community involvement) and they might include acknowledgment from parents, teachers, and peers.

As a teenager, achievements in academics, sports, or creative pursuits and continued self-satisfaction continue the process that adulthood pursues into the next phase, which may or may not ever be completed.

Self-Actualization Needs

The fifth level of Maslow’s pyramid is self-actualization, which is the need for personal growth, fulfillment, and self-realization.

As an adult, this might include aligning one’s daily activities and life’s pursuit or career with one’s personal ambitions, drives, wants, and passions. It might also involve seeking out new experiences, personal development, and self-expression.

The highly driven individual who reaches the peak of achievement in a field of work, sports, the arts, science, medicine, or other such fields are commonly understood as self-actualized—they have actualized their full potential in this lifetime.

Transcendence:

Beyond self-actualization, Maslow later added a sixth level to his hierarchy, which he called transcendence.

This level represents the need to go beyond oneself and contribute to the greater good.

This might manifest in the form of volunteer work, charitable giving, or pursuing a career that makes a positive impact on others. different perspectives, exposure to different ideas and people than one grew up with/around.

To end this blog, as his family announced recently that he’d entered hospice, I can think of no human being in my lifetime who more clearly embodied self-transendence than former United States President Jimmy Carter. He became self-actualized when he won the Presidency—an ambition every small child in the country is told they can one day achieve, no matter how realistic or unrealistic it is for their circumstances. And he embodied the challenge as the child of rural farmers who bucked the conventions of their day; his mother counseled African-American women in the segregated South on matters of health care, and his spirit of service continued after Carter left the White House. He build houses with Habitat for Humanity until his entry into hospice in February of 2023 at age 96.