Because He Had Life

"Because he had life... He had a chance to be brave and seek the truth, to honor and defend it. He had time in which he could have faced fear and overcome it; to know himself without deceit, excuse, or self-pity; to bear pain without bitterness. He had days in which to laugh, to see beauty, to fill his heart with gratitude. He could have been kind and brave and generous... Above all, there were people he could have loved and learned to forgive."

Why are you behaving this way?, I've often wondered of people I observe. My interest in puzzling out the roots of behavior started many years ago, and continues to this day. Specific behaviors are usually learned, so perhaps a better question is - why/how are you motivated to behave this way?

I've observed over many years that anti-actions (actions which psychologically, emotionally, or physical harm another person) are often a reaction to a perceived threat. The action may be displaced from that actual threat in its target, but the perceived threat that triggered the defensive response usually isn't too hard to find. Conversely, pro-actions (actions which psychologically, emotionally or physically aid another person) are more often seen in situations where the actor is secure in his/her circumstances. This is a fairly-simplistic observation, and one that I am not alone in making.

This leads to the questions - Secure from what? A threat to what? Why do we bother to identify and respond to threats?

When looking at explanations of motivation for behavior, I've been particularly struck by Maslow's proposed Hierarchy of Needs. His elegantly-simple model suggests, for example, that you cannot worry about love, friendship, and respecting others if your basic needs for food and water aren't being met. His model was specifically designed to extend motivating drives into realms beyond the purely physiological, and he declared that certain psychological needs (love, belonging, esteem) were powerful motivators in their own right. In examining motivation, he also acknowledged that motivation may be complex, and that a single motivated behavior may be undertaken to satisfy more than one need. (Perhaps Maslow's most depressing idea though is that "Man is a perpetually wanting animal.", which suggests that we will always be striving for something and will never be completely content.)

As with anything that is beautiful in its simplicity, Maslow's theory often lacks integration with other observations. For example, how the choice of behavior that one engages in to fulfill a particular need is made is not explained by this model. It also does not explain (though it does acknowledge) particular instances of altruism where concern for the safety of a relative may drive one to ignore or suppress one's own basic need for food. It does not explain anticipation of future need-fulfilment, or the various ways in which we identify and process threats to need-fulfilment.

Shaver's observation that those who feel secure are much more likely to engage in pro-actions at cost to themselves is likewise beautifully-simple. What he does not tell us is how we might increase our feeling of security in, what is arguably to many people, a dog-eat-dog world.

Maslow also correctly identifies the importance of feeling secure - "...it is precisely those individuals in whom a certain need has always been satisfied who are best equipped to tolerate deprivation of that need in the future, and that furthermore, those who have been deprived in the past will react differently to current satisfactions than the one who has never been deprived."

The questions then become - At what point, if any, have we acquired a permanent bias in how we see the world and how secure we feel in it? What hope is there for people who chronically engage in anti-actions out of fear? What hope for their children who observe and learn these behaviors? How can we achieve a world where everyone can spare energy and time to worry about self-actualization (our highest need according to Maslow)?

Hopefully, asking the questions takes us a step closer to finding answers.

[Confidential Aside: "But it is time you recalled that, though I am a servant, I am not your servant."]