Rationality is a default ability that drives human to survive and prosper as a species: we maximize our benefits. Some would argue that sacrifice is actually a process of making optimal choices after exploring all the possibilities. I would like to believe that people are still ‘rationally’ making decisions but based on diversified needs and cognitive maps/values under different contexts. Based on Maslow’ hierarchy of basic needs, people are all making efforts to meet their basic needs: Physiological needs, Safety needs, Needs of Love, and belongingness, Needs of Esteem, and Needs for self-actualization (Maslow 1943). No matter how decisions are shaped, people are rational towards their needs.
Meeting needs at different time.
For example, for the nights of weekdays, some people may choose to spend happy hours with friends whereas others bury themselves in Library instead. In this case, both these types of people want to maximize the outcome of meeting the needs of love/belongings, self-esteem and self-actualization. Spending time with friends will forge the friendship, belongings and thus boost the chance of making actualize oneself. Studying in the Library is not necessarily a sacrifice of a good time if one speculates it as an investment for future happiness or a personally preferable form of gaining pleasure and belongings from learning.
Meeting needs in different forms.
Likewise, it is true that those so-called selfish people focus more on themselves while people who dedicating time in serving others are more other-oriented. The word ‘selfish’ is based on the assumptions that humans live in a common society and thus you’ll need to take others’ needs into to consideration. In terms of meeting their needs, it does not mean that altruism is irrational: we all want to have belongings and self-actualization, one may just gain more happiness and satisfaction through helping others rather than focusing on themselves.
Meeting different needs across Contexts.
Moreover, people are meeting different needs under different contexts. Some frugal parents may become so generous regarding the education of their kids. In this case, parents value the prosper and reputation of their family more than money. They are still meeting their needs but in the lenses that value more on belongs and self-esteem rather than self-actualization. Also, besides from making decisions based on the metrics of cost-benefits analysis, governments expedite on social welfare and justice as a way to address on market failure. It means that governors are also using social values in addition to dollar values when they are making decisions. It suggests that one is not always making decisions based on consistent metrics.
Like the old saying goes: ‘One man’s food is another’s poison’. The diverse metrics of needs that our rationality base on colorized our human world.
Maslow, Abraham Harold. "A theory of human motivation." Psychological review 50.4 (1943): 370.
Even though Ray came down hard on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs during today's class, I do appreciate the general premise of your blog post - that people make their decisions rationally, and what is rational to them is determined by their current needs and values. Redefining rationality in this way, and moving the original definition away from the one that is popular in economics (i.e. that individuals are monetarily-oriented and will do what is logically in their best interest), seems to be more aligned with how individuals typically behave. This could also be also be applied to explain why individuals perform behaviors that may not seem sensible by our standards, like the lottery ticket example that we discussed in class on Monday.
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ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I came to SNRE was to learn more about behavioral and cognitive understandings of human-environment relationships that motivate or don’t motivate action around climate change and environmental stewardship. This pyramid reminds me of the conversations that I’ve had with people (particularly activists) who do not identify caring for the environment as a basic need, or could be categorized in the bottom tiers of the pyramid. Too often, I hear that being an environmentalist is a “luxury” and for the privileged instead of a core struggle of everyday people, or people who are risking their lives to fight for their fundamental rights. But I feel I've seen that time and time again this isn't true. Therefore, one of my main frustrations with this pyramid is that caring for the environment is not listed as a physiological need. After all, aren’t the categories of breathing, food, water, waste, security, and health all at the heart of environmental studies? More specifically, how could we explain the needs of those risking their lives at Standing Rock if it weren’t for the combination of “basic needs” intersecting with a livelihood and culture rooted in the environment? What is the field of environmental justice if not a fight for communities’ needs at every level? Finally, perhaps the problem is that this pyramid reinforces separating problem solving from attending to needs, morality from love, safety from respect, etc., instead of visually demonstrating the inextricable links and feedbacks among them.
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