Tag Archive for hierarchy of needs

All We Need

Happy Birthday Beatles!

All we need is good health and good relationships. At the end of the day, all we really need from life is good health and healthy relationships with people we love. Good health is not a given for humans. To be healthy, we need good nutrition, we need safe and comfortable housing, we need access to healthcare, we need a stable and peaceful environment (mental health is part of health). All of that requires that we have financial and social support structures. None of this happens in isolation — we can’t all grow our own food and perform self-surgery while building comfortable environments to live in. All those needs require strong social ties inside a stable and supportive community. As they say: people need people. We are not solitary animals. And even with all those needs met, we have to have strong, loving attachments to those we are particularly close to in addition to a stable, supportive community to live in. Human societies share responsibilities. And the more complex our needs and desires become, the more diverse expertise and cooperation are needed. It takes decades to become an experienced doctor. And while those individuals are in training, society needs to…

Health, Human Rights, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs, used under the Creative Commons

In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a paper on human motivation: “A Theory of Human Motivation.” The ideas (and diagram) from that paper have been widely used in business schools and management training programs. But these same ideas can be applied to human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed into life by UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, just five years after the Maslow’s publication of “A Theory of Human Motivation”, echoes the work via a set of Articles stating the rights of every human being. Physiological Needs Article 25 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone is entitled to the right of adequate food (and presumably water is included), housing and clothing (for homeostasis control), and medical care. The right to medical care implies to me the right to live healthy, or at least healthy to the best of ability of a particular individual. This right to medical care as a universal right of all human beings can be interpreted to mean many things. For the purposes of the comparison to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it could be interpreted as every human has the right to have their physiological needs met. This could…