ON THE NEEDS OF SELVES AND SOCIETIES

Between 1995 and 1996, the news media produced a blitz of stories on the so-called Unabomber. After seventeen years of terrorism he threatened more death and destruction unless his manifesto was broadly disseminated. Among the claims in his document were:

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.

The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such people.

Why so much attention paid to this individual? The argument in his text was not new, that modern industrial societies pose grave dangers to both individuals and the environment. Perhaps it had more to do with the audience receptivity to his argument. With the approach of the millennium, optimism in the future is waning, as many individuals sensing that cultural materialism may be approaching its conclusion and that something is missing in the fit between self and society. As Octavio Paz wrote in The Other Voice, in this Age of Modernity we have reached an end of an era, with a society so fragmented and disconnected that it is impossible to know if a new, humane social order can be fashioned or if we will simply revert to savagery.

THE FUNDAMENTAL TENSION

Society Cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

In addition to the tension between nature and nurture there is the old dilemma of individual and community: the tension between personal freedom and social control. Is social cohesion possible without social coercion? Or is it the case, as Sigmund Freud argued in Civilization and Its Discontents, that the history of society is the history of human repression?

On the individual level, various needs are assumed to underlie personal motivations and hence personal behaviors. For instance, John Burton's Deviance, Terrorism and War specifies eight basic human necessities (1979:72): the need for others' response (and consistency thereof); stimulation (and who knows how much this "necessity" has changed historically); security (for instance, freedom from everyday preoccupation with death fears); recognition (through which individuals receive social confirmations that their reactions to social stimulations are relevant and approved); distributive justice (not merely a consistency in response but a response or reward deemed appropriate in terms of individuals' experiences and expectations); the need to appear rational (following from the need for consistency of response; rationality calls attention to the fact that there is a need for consistent behavior in others); need for meaning to be deduced from consistent response; and the need for a sense of control.

This list, of course, is far from exhaustive and there are various "camps" promoting the centrality of their distinctive need systems. These include, for instance, the need to belong, to bond or connect with others; the need for meaningfulness (as put by Richard Nixon, "Unless a person has a reason to live for other than himself, he will die--first mentally, then emotionally, then physically."); and the need for transcendence (studies of terminally ill individuals reveal the need for assurance that they have a legacy, that their lives made a difference, and that others are who they are because of oneself and that these others will carry one's memory with them). Some personality theorists typologize selves in terms of the centrality of particular need drives, such as the Machiavellian's need for power, the Narcissist's need for attention and esteem, or the Authoritarian's need for order.

Social systems have various "needs" as well. There is, for instance, the social need for a collectively shared sense of order and that rules for a society's game board of life are understood and respected by all social actors. An ordered world is a predictable world and the essence of society is the predictability of its members' actions. There are the needs for solidarity between social members (including, as anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn observed, "a set of common values that give meaning and purpose to group life"), their willingness to accept their social duties and to make personal sacrifices for the welfare of others, and their cooperation with each other. Further, if we perceive social systems to be analogous to organisms struggling to survive in potentially hostile environments, there are such supraindividual needs as defense, coordinated action toward collective goals, and the ability to adapt to challenging new internal and external conditions. This brings us to the problem of motivation and how personal impulses become transformed into socially typical and functional goals, such as patriotism on the battlefield or subscribing to the Work Ethic in capitalist economies.

A classic example of the tension between personal and collective needs is described in Garrett Hardin's 1968 paper "The Tragedy of the Commons."  Click here to play the game (Java-capable browser required--a cruder, non-Java version available here).

ELABORATING ON THE NEEDS OF INDIVIDUALS

In postulating the existence of various "needs" underlying human motivations we must be wary of the concept. As Henry Murray observed in Explorations in Personality (Oxford University Press, 1938):

A need is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical concept) which stands for a force (the physiological-chemical nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a force which organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation, and action in such a way as to transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying situation. A need is sometimes invoked by internal processes of a certain kind (viscerogenic, endocrinogenic, thalamicogenic) arising in the course of vital sequences, but, more frequently (when in a state of readiness) by the occurrence of a few commonly effective press (or by anticipatory images of such a press). Thus it manifests itself by leading the organism to search for, or avoid encountering, or, when encountered, to attend to and respond to certain kinds of press...Each need is characteristically accompanied by a particular feeling or emotion...it may be weak or intense, momentary or enduring. But usually it persists and gives rise to a certain course of overt behavior (or fantasy) which (if the organism is competent and external opposition not insurmountable) changes the initiating circumstances in such a way as to bring about an end situation which stills (appeases or satisfies) the organism (pp.123- 4).

Despite such criticism and despite little confirmation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, arguments can be made for the following need systems. What's important to note is that each features a fundamental tension that differentiates different types of selves.

• safety needs vs. the need to flirt with danger. Certainly individuals' drives for survival and security rank among the most primary of need states. People are willing to sacrifice their freedoms in exchange for reductions in fear. Perhaps the central accomplishment of modern societies has been to control untimely death. When this need for security is not met, the psychological consequences are profound. When major catastrophes--earthquakes, airplane crashes, war--occur, the assumption of security dissolves. For victims and witnesses alike, basic trust and even the sense of self-worth are damaged. On the other hand, there are the thrillseekers who "feel alive" only when flirting with danger and even death.
  

  "Teen Risk-Taking: A Statistical Portrait" by Laura Duberstein Lindberg et. al. of the Urban Institute; click here for highlights and here for full report (pdf format).

  A Call to Action: Changing the Culture of Drinking at US Colleges the March 2002 report from the Task Force of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which reported "at least 1,400 college student deaths a year are linked to alcohol"

  

  Injury-related websites from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

  NORC's research from Congress's National Gambling Impact Study Commission

  Links to Gambling Research and Gambling Studies  from the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries

  John Scanlan's Sociology of Gambling links

• needs for order, meaningfulness, and purpose vs. the appeal of chaos. Like moths to lights, humans are attracted to gestalts, to organizing principles that give order-- and hence predictability--and meaning to life's random events. In fact, people are even willing to die for these principles--and, as evident by individuals' willingness to accept masochistic demands of their religious faiths, people will trade off happiness for meaningfulness.  Social actors must have faith in the premise that theirs is a benevolent world for those who observe the rules and that nothing bad will come to those who one act as they should. As will be developed later, this need for order and an explanation for suffering is the basis of religion for many individuals: Religion's posited order gives meaning and purpose to one's existence and instills a sense of trust in the world.   

  In 1997, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl died at age 92. Unlike most of his family, Frankl survived the Nazi concentration camps, wherein he observed one trait that distinguished many who survived and who didn't: the ability to find meaning in their lives, which gave them the will and strength to endure. His death brought to mind one statement posed in 1991 to an international sample of people: "In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose." Certainly this is not the healthiest of perspectives to hold--neither for the individual nor for society. Indeed, across the 18,942 individuals in the seventeen nations of this study, those strongly disagreeing with this statement were twice as likely to report being very happy than those either agreeing or neither agreeing or disagreeing with it (26% vs. 13%). Observe how national opinions toward life's purposefulness are affected when we control for individuals' religiosity.

  This sense of absence of meaning and purpose is to social systems what cancer is to the biological systems: a force of dissolution and death. The key concept here is anomie, the experiences of normlessness, meaninglessness, self- estrangement, and belief that one's life is going no where. The anomic are the socially excluded, the bored, the idle, the spiritually restless--those who care for nothing and who, in their social misery, are fully capable of committing meaningless acts of violence or suicide. The anomic include such individuals as the New York City oil-truck driver who, on a narrow lower Manhattan street in 1991, steadfastly refused to move his vehicle so that an emergency crew could rush a heart-attack victim to a hospital. In describing this state, Robert MacIver wrote that anomie:

  signifies the state of mind of one who has been pulled up by his moral roots, who has no longer any standards but only disconnected urges, who has no longer any sense of continuity, of folk, of obligation. The anomic man has become spiritually sterile, responsive only to himself, responsible to no one. He derides the values of other men. His only faith is the philosophy of denial. He lives on the thin line of sensation between no future and no past (1950:84-85).

  On the other hand, too much order and predictability can be extremely boring. Historians remind us of how the Romantic movement evolved in reaction to the rationalities of the Enlightenment.

• affiliative needs vs. needs for privacy and solitude. The need to belong may be greater than the need for meaning, which may be why post-World War I Germans gravitated toward Hitler as opposed toward the Communists: the latter offered the people an ideology whereas the Nazis gave a sense of belonging.

  People's struggles to "connect" with others is a central theme of their life stories. Isolation and loneliness run contrary to human nature, which is perhaps why solitary confinement is considered one of the most severe forms of punishment and why various political and religious groups use "banning" as a form of retribution. In South Africa in the mid-1970s, for instance, black activist Ms. Winnie Mandela was banned by the Justice Minister. She could meet with more than one person at a time except for a member of her immediate family. Observed a member of the Institute of Race Relations, "On a sociological level, it's almost an effort to turn someone into a nonperson, to expunge him, to pretend he doesn't exist" (Darton, John. 1977. "Banning: Unique South African Punishment." New York Times, Oct. 27.)

  There is, in fact, a life-giving force when one is connected with others. Married individuals have a four to five year life-expectancy advantage over their single counterparts. Heart attack victims living alone are, according to a 1992 study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, almost twice as likely as others to have another, possibly fatal, attack within six months. Check out the works in developmental psychology's attachment theory.

• needs for attention vs. social invisibility.

  I am an invisible man. ... I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me.--Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

  A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized."-- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

  When guests arrive at my household it seems that all family members--the kids, dog, and even the bird--become involved in the game of attention-getting. This need for attention manifests itself in numerous ways:

  • A child's unsatisfied need for adult attention, for instance, may lead to deviant classroom behavior if his or her academic activities are not rewarded.
  • Underlying the high teenage pregnancy rate in the United States may also involve a strategy for adult attention: Perhaps for the first time in their lives, pregnant teenagers find attention and love.
  • One source of states' revenues is the selling of "vanity" license plates.
  • And what else but the need for attention can explain individuals' drives to make the Guiness Book of World Records, such as Ron Collins swallowing 953 lima beans in 10 minutes at the National Lima Bean Association festival in 1987?

  With this need system we can begin thinking about the social psychology of inequality, and consider such matters as how attention-giving and attention-receiving can be built into our roles. For a variety of reasons, women are often socialized to be attention-givers while males, who are so often inclined to direct conversation to themselves, are attention-receivers. In addition, while the poor and disenfranchised often become socially invisible, as when they sleep on the streets and passersby feign not seeing them, the affluent can afford to pay others to give them the attention they feel is lacking. As is the case for all of these need systems, there can be too much of a good thing such as the National Enquirer effect. Consider the causticity of the limelight for many celebrities. In discussing this dark side of fame, comedian Steve Martin observed:

  There is nothing good about it. What's so demoralizing is that it has nothing to do with me. It could be Oliver North. It could be Jack Ruby. It has nothing to do with my work. It becomes more and more abstract all the time. It has to do with recognition, and a weird kind of laying on of hands. It's not that your presence lets them get in tough with their fantasies. It's that your presence lets them get in touch with reality. (quote from Rainie, Harrison. 1994. "Jackie." U.S. News & World Report, May 30:21- 22).

  This excess of attention leads some to become "captive of their celebrity," which proved fatal for such individuals as Davy Crockett, Amelia Earhart, and late Princess Diana.  In addition, related to matters of control below, is also the issue of privacy.  (Example: the August 2000 Pew study Trust and Privacy Online: Why Americans Want to Rewrite the Rules).

• need for control vs. need to be dominated.  The importance of control needs, whether over one's own fate or over others, has been variously approached in the social sciences. For instance, consider the literatures on autonomy, internal vs. external locus of control), and learned helplessness. The feeling of being in control, of having a sense of mastery over what happens in one's life, has verified impacts on physical and mental health. When events seem beyond one's control, as is too often the case for many elderly nursing home residents, the consequences can include depression, diminished esteem, fatalism, and hastened death.

  Related to the need for control and power is David McClelland's (The Achievement Motive [1953, with Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell]; The Achieving Society [1961]) need for achievement.  The cross-cultural variations of this hypothesized drive to succeed and excel foreshadows our discussions of cultural personality types.

  On the other hand, are not there those who seek to be dominated by others, as among sadomasochists. There can be a certain security in having some other assume the responsibility for directing one's life, to make the hard decisions and buffer one from the unpleasant and unexpected.

• Finally, consider the need for esteem vs. drives toward self-degradation. Impressive as the drives detailed above are, there are many who argue that the need for respect and dignity is the premier motivator of human action. Society, of course, is what provides the bases by which self-worth is gauged and allocated. Stratification systems like castes or social classes, for instance, can reassure individuals of their self-worth by specifying their superiority over those at lower rungs. Sample topics:
  • the self-esteem/feel-good-about-yourself movements in American public schools: does it reduce drug abuse and teenage pregnancy?
  • are persons with low self-esteem more likely to engage in deviant behavior?
  • society's degrading roles: I still recall an interview in NBC News's "Street Shadows" documentary (shown June 24, 1987), wherein a young male prostitute observed how "with each trick you sell a little of your soul until there's nothing left - you're an empty shell."
  • how much of self-esteem is based on self-appearance? for whom in society is this basis of esteem the greatest?
  • how in some social outgroups personal esteem can become so precarious that even a few words or a gesture can threaten its integrity and provoke extreme violence. In the youth culture of Brooklyn in 1990, for instance, a 15-year-old youth was shot simply because he had "dissed" another by refusing to reciprocate a "high five."