Maslows Heirarchy of Needs

The animal spirits given full flight through liberal capitalism across the planet indisputably represent that aspect of human nature which has seen the human race become the most successful predator on this planet.

Although ESD addresses the very survival of our species and the planet, it speaks to a human race whose individual motivations are much more primitive, as Maslow identified regarding these animal spirits in his seminal work on physical and psychological needs.

Maslow ranked these human needs from the most primitive (air, food water) to the most evolved (self actualization).  As a priority ESD probably ranks along with self actualisation at number ten in Maslows heirarchy of human needs tabled below.

It is a measure of the success of these behavioural drivers that human activity has evolved to become the environment’s worst enemy, and the more primitive the human need the greater the threat to the environment.  ESD is against human nature, and cannot expect to modify these primitive human behaviours against such a paradigm paralysis.

What ESD can do, and will do if it is implemented properly, is to modify either or both supply side and demand side economic fundamentals (as necessary) to modify individual aspirations.

The development of a weighting mechanism in opposition to human nature would invert Maslows Heirarchy to motivate consumer behaviour towards sustainable solutions.  This is the only consumption strategy which will deliver even the most primitive needs necessary to the long term survival of the species intergenerationally.

This inversion of the pyramidal ranking of human needs would produce a table of Human Species Needs in relation to the implementation of ESD as below.

If Maslow’s Heirarchy is a general theory of the cost drivers for consumer behaviour of individuals, then the Heirarchy of Human Species Needs represents the cost drivers for the consumption behaviour of the community necessary to implement ESD.

Applying a normal distribution to Maslows Heirarchy of human needs gives a more accurate representation of global human consumer behaviour, where the most primitive needs of so many of us are yet to be met, as below.