hold this thought in mind as you read this piece…
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility…”
In order to form a “more perfect union”… not to form
a perfect union, but “in order to form a more perfect union”
and the essense of the American ideal as established by the founding fathers,
is to adapt, change, modify to “form a more perfect union” by
“we the people” …now hold onto this thought of forming a
“more perfect union” and how do we go about forming a “more perfect union”?
we now return to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in which in which we understand
the basic needs of the individual… but we must understand that no individual stands
alone… we are social creatures who can only survive within a social context…
the statement that “no man is an island” is quite true in a literal sense…no
human being can survive alone…
we see in Maslow Hierarchy that the physiological needs of the body make
up the bottom, the base of the pyramid… to survive we need the basic
physiological needs of biological beings… food, water, warmth, rest, among
the biological needs of human beings… as an liberal, I am going to add
education and medical needs into this list… and the last thing I am adding is
love… we know that babies deprived of love in their first year quite often
die… so we can add love into the mix of basic physiological needs…
as it true for an individual, is also true of an society… a society must
meet its physiological needs if it is to survive… the society must engage in
providing food, water, warmth, rest and as I have included education
and medical care, we need to include those into our basic understanding of
what a society/state must have to survive…
the next step on his hierarchy is safety needs, which is security and safety needs
the interesting thing about this one is that if one knows history, we know
that both individual and the collective security needs were often neglected
or just outright ignored…we know from history that the average person
personal safety or security was limited at best throughout history…
the threat of violence was never far from the surface during most
of human history and this include our own “wild west” where personal
security was limited to the number of guns one might own……
it can be said that we can judge a society by how much security/safety
it provides for its individual members of that society… a
society that can provide security and safety for its members is
a stronger and steadier society then a society where security
and safety is problematic for the members of that society.
the next level of needs is love/belonging…we are social creatures and
we need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance among our social groups…
as I work in a system, as a checker, I need to feel a sense of belonging
and acceptance in my engagement with my peers, with other checkers
and baggers and others that I have contact with in my store…
and the next level of engagement is the self-esteem need in which
our ego and status needs need to be met…
gaining recognition, status, importance and respect from those within my
engagement with others, either in my work group or in my day to day group,
any social groups I may belong to…(in which I don’t in fact, belong to any other
group beside my work group and I don’t want to belong to that group because
my fondest goal in life is to retire from my crappy job) but I am a exception to the need
that wants status and recognition and respect from my peers… I just don’t care…
and the final need according to Maslow is self-actualization…
the quote that best defines this is
“what a man can be, he must be”
to discover one’s full potential is the high point of one aspirations in one’s life
and what is true individually, is also true collectively… societal needs are the same…
from the lowest need of physical needs to discovering society’s full potential,
and what is stopping us from reaching our full potential?
I would suggest that our failure comes from our failure to choose
values that bring us to our full potential… now recall my comments
on “we the people, in order to form a more perfect union”
we have held these thoughts in mind as I have written the last few
paragraphs…so how do we go about “forming a more perfect union”?
we choose values that engage us on a higher level of existence…
that is to say, we find values that reach up instead of down…
we don’t choose values that are lower, instinctual values of anger
and hate and lust and greed and violence… we choose values that
lead us to becoming human, even more human…… and this is the case
for us to reach our “forming a more perfect union” we don’t hold values
that are the lower values of instincts, of hate, violence, anger, greed,
lust… we hold higher values of peace, love, charity, justice…
it is our engagement/choice of higher values that will lead us to
“form a more perfect union”…….it is our engagement with higher values
that will lead us to try to fulfill, not only for us but for everyone,
the Maslow hierarchy of needs……
we choose the values that enables us to fulfill the possibility of a “more perfect union”
and we can choose the values that makes it possibility for us to complete for everyone
the Maslow hierarchy of needs………
the values we choose… values that compel us to rise to becoming more human,
not less… thus we must reject such values as nationalism and hatred and
superstition and prejudice and intolerance… these values cannot help us
form a “more perfect union” and these negative values cannot allow us to
achieve our goal of moving up the hierarchy of needs from the basic necessities
to achieving self-actualization…… hate and anger and lust and greed
is not the path to the creation of a “more perfect union”… but justice
and love and charity and peace are the path to the creation of a “more perfect union”.
thus we reject IQ45 values of anti-LGBT and misogyny and racism
and intolerance and sexism and hate and anger and greed among
the values IQ45 supports and promotes… why do we reject?
because those values are in conflict with the goal of a “more perfect union”
and those vile values of hate are in conflict with an attainment of
the goal of achieving Maslow hierarchy of needs……. if we hate,
we don’t care if those we hate have food, water, warmth, shelter,
education, health care… to achieve our individual and collective goal
of “forming a more perfect union” and achieving our collective and individual
goal of rising from one level of Maslow hierarchy to the next level, we
must engage in the inclusive goals of love and peace and hope and charity, to
allow others to achieve their goal of rising to another level of Maslow hierarchy…
we are social creatures… we exists collectively and as such, we must engage
with each other collectively and attempt to rise together to “form a more perfect union”
and to rise to another level of the hierarchy of needs…….and the method of
engagement is to choose values which allows engagement with others on an equal
basis… tolerance and love and peace and hope and non-violence are some of those
values we must choose if we are to form a “more perfect union”
so, choose, which values are going to choose to create a “more perfect union”
and which values are you going to choose to allow both yourself and others
to move up the hierarchy of needs?
Kropotkin