Need representation: antiquated, premature and unexpressed needs

Needs Communication: viable need patterns and their identification (Part #6)

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It may be useful to think of the question in terms of a rubber sphere whose surface represents the continuity of the human need field. Each individual distorts such a sphere in a different manner, creating 'continents' of expressed needs projected beyond the equilibrium mean position and intercontinental 'troughs' of unexpressed needs below that mean. The topography may be expected to change over time in response to the individual's changing understanding of his shortand long-term circumstances and priorities. Furthermore, the 'resilience' of the sphere may be expected to ensure that, over a sufficient spread of cultures or period of time, each need will be expressed or represented.

This representation fails to clarify the tricky normative question of needs that 'should be' positively valued by society. It is doubtful whether the highly charged issue of the positive systemic function of negatively valued needs in a dynamic, evolving society could be examined at this time-either (1) as a corrective to the misuse of satisfiers of needs positively valued by society, or (2) as a trigger to provoke collective social recognition of hitherto ignored needs.(16) This raises the question of how needs may be misunderstood or perceived as irrelevant. How do we 'discover' the unrecognized needs of the past? What are the articulated 'basic human needs' of the year 2050 that we are now unable to recognize as significant- and why is that so? Using the metaphor of a food diet, are there psychosocial 'trace element' needs the consequences of whose nonfulfillment take some time to manifest and are, by definition, difficult to detect other than by the obscure symptoms of their absence?

Why is it that both Mallmann's and Galtung's need lists stress the needs of the individual and ignore the social systemic effects on the individual of the attempt to fulfill those needs? They list the needs that can be associated with positive ('growth facilitating') feedback loops, presumably on the assumption that negative ('growth constraining') feedback loops are not, or at least should not be, associated with needs. Then at what level are they to be taken into account? If such constraints are considered to be societal rather than human needs, then this opens the door to all the distortion and abuse to which Galtung has drawn attention once the individual is no longer the measure of all things. (If they are labeled 'responsibilities' rather than needs, in order to shift them into a separate arena of debate, then there is still a basic need for such responsibilities to be fulfilled by the individual, thus reintroducing them into this debate.)

In most cases the identified needs reflect the current preoccupation with deconstraining the individual, as with the adolescent attempting to throw off the paternal and maternal scaffolding of family life. But they do not contain any element of the selfconstraint needed by the adult in a bounded society-unless generous interpretations are given to some of the terms used.

The needs identified imply no limits to personal growth (contrasting sharply with the supposed limits to economic growth, possibly ignored for a similar reason), although maturity in many realms is acknowledged as being associated with an appropriate recognition, internalization, and structural use of limitations (e.g., artistic media, military strategy, Taoist philosophy,(17) design, etc.). By failing to note the need for limitations as a catalyst for qualitative maturation, the implication is one of personal growth by quantitative 'spread' (reinforcing analogous tendencies at the collective level). There is, for example, no implication of a basic human need for a self-imposed constraint on reproduction or for any other form of self-discipline, including resource conservation. Because such a constraint is not yet a well-articulated felt need, the individual (or the following generation) engenders and is subsequently faced with the social constraints arising from the lack of such self-constraint and will emit the complaints (of a child expecting succour) that basic human needs are not being fulfilled as completely as desired.

The confusion is most strikingly dramatized in the case of the ultimate form of self-constraint-namely, death (as contrasted with 'life' in the previous section). Need lists tend to be linear and unidirectional in ignoring the cyclic significance of aging and death as the necessary counterparts of growth and birth, almost implying a static childlike belief in eternal youth and everlasting life (in an endless summertime). This would be an immediate demographic disaster. In the light of the current image of man, there is a basic human need for gradual aging and the eventual death of the individual, whether

1. Suddenly, as an intrinsic feature of some sports (climbing, motor racing, etc.), where it is only by total personal risk that a vital sense of reality is achieved (directly or vicariously, misplaced or not), or as associated with any form of heroism, itself a vital focus of drama in every culture;
2. As a consciously perceived climax of a life lived and developed to its fullest extent (cf. the death of Tagore, Aurobindo, Jung, etc.), in which age is felt to be a consequence and a measure of experience;
3. As a merciful relief for those acknowledging exhaustion at conditions they consider impossible to overcome meaningfully (cf. the euthanasia and suicide issues and the associated embarrassment); or
4. As a basic necessity in a bounded society enjoying the unconstrained reproductive process and its fruits, but with limited resources and currently dependent on death for role renewal and social change (even in so-called revolutionary societies).

Further exploration would probably show how it is such blindspots in the perceived need set of a culture or an era that define very precisely the problems by which it will be challenged or destroyed. (This is also true of the development cycle of the individual personality.) Such problems become the vehicle for the expression of the ignored needs. In this way, for example, warfare, illness, and famine have been tacitly used by societies as a way of allowing the level of their populations to be controlled. Despite efforts to avoid this path, an alternative has not been located, and many have articulated the consequences to be anticipated in the near future.

An approach to these questions is by focusing on the possible 'distortions' of some 'conceptual surface' that is used to represent the complete range of needs.(18) Some kinds of distortion may favor recognition of grosser, cruder, or more selfish needs, obscuring the subtler needs that are only to be fully recognized by the future. A focus on such a surface might also clarify possibilities for 'displacing' the focus of a need-a need to dominate focused on people may perhaps be usefully displaced onto one's own emotions or thoughts.

If there are criteria for distinguishing between more and less complete sets of perceived human needs, these are likely to emerge from the constraints on the representation of such sets, if they are to be comprehensible as sets of interrelated needs. This has been discussed elsewhere.(19) It may be that the Galtung-Mallmann type of 'deconstraining' need set should be balanced by a corresponding set of 'constraining' needs (possibly on a one-to-one basis). The models discussed here facilitate exploration of this question.

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