If all your needs were met, what would you do with your life?

Padawanbater2

Well-Known Member

New Age United

Well-Known Member
But aren't we provided with all our basic needs, I mean if you're still alive you have all the basic needs. I don't see how moslows list of needs actually qualify as needs but rather ideals. I have all of the basic needs and I like to spend my free time with friends and family, hunting and fishing, I like to read and think and learn, and of course growing and smoking my medicine.
 

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
If you were provided with everything you need to live a basic life, what would you do with your time?
Excellent question!

My answer is....

Exactly what I'm doing right now. I'm too pig headed to tolerate corporate America, so I had little choice but to seek my dream and live it.

I fervently hope everyone out there who reads this thread can say the same thing, although I'm very sure most cannot.
 

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
It's too bad that chart doesn't define self actualization. It's the most important one. In fact, the more I've studied this chart, the less it fits with my experience and observation of human needs. The bottom works fine, but that's the easy part.

I don't need to believe in God or be highly spiritual to desire to help my fellow humans.

Subsistence is boring. Eventually people will want to be creative. That creative expression of self IS self actualization; and artists do it all the time, lol.
 

Padawanbater2

Well-Known Member
philanthropy man. no better feels than helping your brother man out imo.
I think many people feel this way. According to that hierarchy theory by Maslow, that's the highest level of personal enlightenment.

I have this book that touches on that a little bit, it's remained one of my favorite paragraphs since I read it;

"Although Socrates himself never claimed to have knowledge, he does appear to have held certain positive doctrines. Principal among these is the Socratic paradox, that no one willingly chooses to act immorally. On the face of it this appears clearly false. After all, there are all kinds of actions one recognizes as wrong but which one may choose to perform if one judges that they will bring benefit to oneself. For example, someone may choose to lie, cheat or steal if they believe they can get away with it and gain some advantage. Socrates, however, held that this betrays some confused thinking. For in acting immorally they actually harm their own character far more than they harm their victim. While they may succeed in stripping others of material possessions and other trappings of worldly accomplishment, genuine human happiness is a matter of inner harmony and self-mastery rather than material success. To come to this realization, however, requires some careful reflection on the true nature of virtue; reflection which will show, according to Socrates, that acting morally is the true route to personal flourishing. Hence another of his paradoxical claims, that virtue is knowledge, or, in other words, that if one truly knows what is good one cannot but choose to do it." -Philosophers: Extraordinary People Who Altered the Course of History, Nicola Chalton
 

Don Gin and Ton

Well-Known Member
in stark contrast I would be seriously tempted to turn to evil and sin. just for shits and giggles more than willingly I'd actively seek deviance and immorality. no wait that's what i'm at now. lol. socrates flitted between one and the other on the regular I reckon.
 
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