Bucket Logic / Waterstone’s Continuum of Needs

Some time ago, I published The Pyramid as an adjunct to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It was one of the more subjective analyses I’d penned, but strangely, also the most popular. Never able to linger idly, the cogs of my subconscious grind away in perpetuity on the entire library of this journal. Understanding is motive, and the more a man learns, the less he knows. Presenting something of an offshoot to Maslow’s Hierarchy: the continuum of needs.

Again, the impending analysis will take elements from a slew of prior pieces, and seek to integrate conceptually, borrowing and melding concepts of economics, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Whilst I’d previously understood nearly all the ‘pieces’ in isolation, they were as a collection of glass shards. The precipitating factor which allowed their fusing into a single pane on my mind’s window was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a treatise on Objectivism which yields uncanny insight into many aspects of the human condition.

The Pyramid classes needs as building upon one another, beginning with the rudimentary, corporeal needs such as sustenance at the bottom, through the upper reaches of the ethereal and esoteric. The Continuum recognises this logical progression, but overlays additional dimensions for degrees of fulfilment and the rationale driving the need. Further, this new framework is capable of emulating an economic model because it also reconciles the value we ascribe to fulfilling our needs.

At the core of the continuum concept is the linearity of progression from one extreme to the other. With respect to the fulfilment of needs; our scale starts at simple and proceeds through to the highly complex.

Bucket Logic

As human beings, we can look at our needs in life as a collection of empty buckets. Our implicit aspiration is twofold: to fill as many of these buckets, as fully as we can. Generally speaking, our buckets bear the same labels as everyone else’s: ‘love,’ ‘belonging,’ ‘material wellbeing,’ and the like. Each bucket or need is distinct, although they can often be filled using the same liquid (i.e. perhaps ‘love’ and ‘happiness’).

We differentiate individuals by the relative sizes of these buckets. Some people have a large ‘material wellbeing’ bucket and a comparatively smaller ‘philanthropy’ bucket. A criminal might have a huge ‘physical gratification’ bucket and an infinitesimal ‘moral justice’ bucket – there are variations as numerous and diverse as people on this Earth.

Moving back to the bucket system; Maslow’s hierarchy identifies/labels the buckets broadly and suggests the order in which they ought to be filled. This is important in its own right, but limited because many important questions go begging. For example, the hierarchy cannot tell us why bucket sizes vary between people, nor does it shed any light on the interrelationships between the needs or ‘bucket dynamics.’

A more powerful model is needed, because (among other things), as we start to fill these buckets, they often get bigger: the central premise underpinning the continuum. Needs are relative and dynamic pursuits which don’t yield to order and rationality.

Waterstone’s Continuum

First, we’ll wrestle with the issue of relativity. The size of the bucket defines the relative importance of the need and influences both how far we are willing to go, and how much we are prepared to expend to satisfy that need or fill the bucket. We will work under the assumption of four bucket sizes: Regular, Tall, Grande and Venti. Any semblance to Starbucks’ coffee pricing system is purely coincidental. Each bucket size has a corresponding degree attached to the need. They are, in order: (1) Utility, (2) Gratification, (3) Projection, and (4) Validation.

The best way to understand these degrees is their alignment to the type and value of benefit satisfying the need or (filling the bucket) confers upon the individual. We’ll employ this method using the category of food, and then see how it can be applied across other categories.

1. Utility (Regular)

At the basic level we have utility needs or anything that can be deemed an existential necessity to some degree. Objects satisfying utility needs proffer no significance or value beyond or greater than fulfilling/serving/performing a basic purpose or function. Bread, by way of example, is a utility-level solution to the need of sustenance which we articulate as hunger. As you eat the slice of bread, you don’t construe any value over and above it satiating your hunger – the value corresponds directly to utility of purpose. The bread satisfies hunger and provides sustenance.

2. Gratification (Large)

Moving up the scale, these needs morph into gratification needs, which are merely extensions of their utilitarian counterparts, augmented by ancillary dimensi0ns. Falling into this category are objects which bestow value greater than pure utility, often in the form of sensory pleasure. Pandering for food, were we to shun the bread in favour of a Big Mac, this would be a gratification-level solution. Incremental value is derived from the degree of difference in sensory experience because the Big Mac tastes better than the slice of bread. The Big Mac satisfies hunger, provides sustenance, and also grants contentment from taste (debateable depending on personal preference). This additional contentment benefit necessarily makes the object more valuable, and our need for gratification justifies willingness to pay a higher price.

3. Projection (Grande)

Further still, the point is reached where the need rises to a level of projection. Here, the scarcity and/or exhibitive aspects of the object create projection value. Projection value is intrinsically specious as it cannot be quantified nor held against any objective standard. It exists by virtue of man being a social creature and is a function of perception. Keeping with our food analogy, let’s say we indulged by dining on Filet Mignon at an expensive French restaurant. A third degree of value is derived from the positive feeling of radiating ‘superiority’ in some capacity. As a general rule, if the object is conventionally used to rank status, then projection value will reflect how much the object distinguishes – the more it shows you’re better than the crowd, the higher the willingness to pay.

4. Validation (Venti)

The highest level of need is validation. At this extreme, value assumes a fourth degree; that of self-worth, and the object or act of fulfilment defines character. Unfortunately I can’t think of any real-life instance where validation is achieved through food, unless Popeye the Sailor Man actually exists, in which case spinach would be denoted validating – because without it, Popeye simply wouldn’t be Popeye.

Perhaps a more intuitive way to look at it is through deprivation. Validation being a rationalisation for existence of one’s being, the object of fulfilment fuses as a core element of identity. The things that fulfil our validation needs make us who we are.  Take away the object of fulfilment and we cease being ourselves by our definition. Love tends to have this effect and is a validating object precisely because of our enormous willingness to pay. Collectively, quantities of energy, compromise and commitment that evade quantification are bartered for a degree of shared identity. When a relationship dissolves, the value of this shared identity evaporates. Anyone who’s been madly in love and subsequently been heartbroken would tell you they felt they’d lost part of themselves.

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Having established the framework, we can apply it to virtually any need category, such as transport in the form of automobiles:

There is an obvious correlation between the need levels and willingness to pay for the corresponding fulfilment objects. As value increases, so too does the amount of money, time and energy we are prepared to forfeit for the object.

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Taking a step back, we can conceptualise the four tiers as corresponding to the concentric circles of physical, mental, emotional and ‘spiritual’ (in the definitive sense) in the diagram below. Physical needs are most often utilitarian in nature, gratification is a mental concept, emotion underpins the function of projection, and most measures of validation default to spirituality. Utilitarian needs are redundant in absence of a body, as are gratification without the mind, projection without emotion, and validation without spirit. These four linkages yield a normalised system for categorising needs: physical needs such as sustenance and shelter being classed under ‘utility’ and so on.

 

Another interesting feature of the continuum is its ascending degree of obscurity, and therein incidence of confusion. Physical needs are straightforward – you eat when you’re hungry and sleep when you’re tired. Mental needs are complex, but still relatively commonsensical – you read a book or have a conversation if your mind is bored.

At some juncture between the mental and emotional domains, the blurring begins as the single stream branches out into countless capillaries, much like a river’s delta. Whilst physical and mental needs are predominantly homogeneous, emotional and spiritual needs are the opposite.

The first two categories of need are defined predominantly by human biology – we are utilitarian creatures, separated from other animals by an advanced consciousness which allows us to seek gratification.  By contrast, the latter two (projection and validation) are a product of environment, upbringing, social conditioning, experience, individual preference, values and chance.

Analysis:  Projection

To impart an example, let’s first look at the operational dynamics of projection. Being an emotion-based need, projection is invariably subjective because the emotional linkages and triggers are set by external context. Associative variability is enormous – some cultures mourn death, others celebrate it, the mourners associate death with negative emotion, and the celebrators with positive emotion.

In the same way, the objects which fulfil our projection needs vary considerably due to myriad external factors. I may wear a Versace suit or drive around in a Ferrari to fulfil my projection need of demonstrating superiority in a modern capitalist society. Were I a constituent of a tribal clan however, that projection need to demonstrate superiority would be fulfilled more appropriately by battle scars and parading remnants of beasts I’d slain.

Evidently, the labels upon, and the liquids that fill our projection buckets are largely defined externally, though we can choose to reject and replace them with our own. There is no absolute, objective rule that tells me I must have expensive possessions, a prestigious job and be surrounded by beautiful people to fulfil the core emotional/projection need of espousing superiority. Those ‘objects’ are merely generally accepted defaults that have significance only because enough people perceive them as demonstrative and believe them to be important. As objects, they are the arbitrary outcome of a single developmental trajectory. Were society’s evolution more backwards, it would still be physical strength that determined projected status; and were society more advanced, it’d likely be some measure of enlightenment or wisdom.

The jury is out on exactly what should ‘fill’ projection buckets, but the current standard strikes me as odd, given zero correlation between a person’s wealth/occupation/social prowess and their comparative intrinsic value to society. Though human beings are equal by virtue of mortality, licenses for projection should be awarded on merit as measured against objective principles rather than circumstantial characteristics. Absurdity is a monarch esteemed with the highest regard, for being born into the title.

Analysis:  Validation

Such is the general obsession with demonstrating social value that objects of projection often transgress the final frontier and become objects of validation. More disturbing however, is the increasing propensity to validate on hollow or otherwise specious objects. We use the term ‘objects’ loosely to convey any inanimate object, entity, characteristic, intangible, value, act, association or notion to which an individual links their identity. Friendship group, occupation, nationality, partner, family, car, sex (adj. and v.), skill, religion, intelligence, opinion, money, class, morality – all are objects of validation.

Without validation, there is no reason to exist: it is fundamentally our internal ratification behind the act of living. Semantics tells us that ‘validation’ is transposable with ‘authentication,’ whose past tense denotes something has been verified as genuine.

The most ‘genuine’ and ‘real’ people I’ve crossed paths with have had one thing in common. Although many of the objects enumerated above were important to them, their validation rested foremost on unswerving principles. Historically, you will find the most admirable figures have reflected this devotion to their principles. The heroes of literature and film are the characters willing to make sacrifices and die for their principles. Every social, economic and political construct that has ever improved the quality of human life has been based on principles. Ideally, the nature of these principles should emanate from objective virtues such as integrity and justice: two foundation metrics of worth.

Principles have three differentiating attributes which separate them from all other objects of validation: they are endogenous, controllable and stable. True independent capacity rests solely on these metrics. In validating your identity on anything environmental, outside your control or volatile, you become a whimsical function of the world around you. The question then becomes one of how long you can fool yourself and forestall a crisis of identity. Bar a life of blissful ignorance, it will eventually catch up.

Substance of character is an outcome of validation object. Time and again, I have witnessed incidences that attest to this linkage. Some months ago for example, I was close to a divorce case whereby one of the divorcees had committed substantial fraud in proceedings, which was supported by the false testimony of each member of the family who took the stand. This exemplified the common phenomenon of a secondary validation object being upheld against objective principle. Many people are deluded by a mindset based on the axiom “blood is thicker than water,” and fail to reconcile that undermining principle for the sake of tainted blood is among the most grievous betrayals of morality. In this case, the subversion of integrity was a direct reflection of amoral character.

Where we have a choice, principles should be the liquid that fills our validation bucket. It is a minefield because it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of allowing collective principle as a substitute for objective principle, which is where social expectations and the law become relevant. Law presents an impediment to principle because not all law is just nor equitable in a strict sense. Therefore to the extent we obey those laws which fit this category, we can never be truly validated on principle. On the flipside, we are compelled because we cannot live in society unless we abide, so principle is inevitably frustrated by this Catch 22.

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Classically defined, ‘need’ can be something of a misnomer. Existence requires but a few basic objects such as food and shelter. – the only true needs. Ancillary desires of gratification and projection which aren’t necessities for survival are more aptly termed ‘wants.’ Finally, to the extent psychological health is important; objects of validation are salient for they underpin survival in a social and emotional context.

Life is short and we are perpetually constrained by limitations of time and energy. The buckets we concentrate our efforts upon reveal our subconscious perception of meaning and purpose in life. The liquids we fill them with determine the fulfilment and contentment we attain. Have you checked yours lately?

~ by X on July 28, 2008.