I keep hearing various opinions about what needs people feel are not being met in this day and age. I mean it in the broadest sense - emotional, psychological, financial, practical, technological. Some of these sound like they’re nothing new but have really been issues that people have been dealing with since time immemorial.
But objectively now, what could be some needs many people could honestly are not being met in the case of many people specifically in our era? We have advanced in many ways with technology, services available, social progress, the Internet, etc. What is there that could be truly lacking in many people’s lives in spite of all this?
Some thoughts:
Community
Social equality
Economic security
Meaningful work
Freedom from hierarchy and authority
Easy, affordable access to healthcare
Leisure time
Good education
Reliable infrastructure, including water
That’s for starters. If you have all of these, congratulations. Many people in Canada and the US do not.
Well, setting the bar pretty low, my impression is that there are quite a few Americans who lack:
Safe, clean housing
Adequate healthy food
Ready access to minimal medical care (including mental health)
IMO, if these are not met, much of what Kropotkin lists are luxuries.
I think many (most?) Americans have a desperate need for community. TV dealt an almost-fatal blow to a lot of the ways in which we (adults especially) interacted with other adults – think the Elks Lodge or the Ladies’ Gardening Society or what have you. Of course, it was/is a slow death, hastened along by COVID. Obviously those things still exist but they are shells of what they once were. These days I wager that most American adults only interact socially with other adults in the context of school (soccer moms at the pitch on Saturday, or PTA meetings) or church. I’m not versed (heh) enough in sociology to say whether or not church attendance is now higher than it was in, say, 1955, but even so, I imagine that church plays a smaller role in the social lives of average Americans than it did seven decades ago.
As an agnostic, non-parent adult, I practically ache for contact with other, like-minded adults, but it’s impossible for me. I’m not joining the local Eagles lodge (the only fraternal society within 20 miles of me) because they’re all old MAGAts and we just wouldn’t have anything in common. I have no church affiliattion and no reason to be around parents/grandparents of schoolchildren so I’m largely just on my own. It’s sad.
Not intending to pick on you in particular, because I think I know exactly what you mean, but I would like to suggest that it is not impossible for you (you did not mention that you are housebound and can’t go where other people are, so I assume that is not the case). At worst, if you are in a very remote location and loneliness is a problem, you can consider moving. If you are not remote, and have any kind of outside interests, you can find people who share that interest and seek them out. The internet, that bane of community, is actually very useful in this regard. Even I, an atheist, non-parent, retired adult with nearly crippling social anxiety, have managed to to so. In short, you do have agency in meeting your own need for community.
My response to the OP is that most people have agency for meeting their own emotional needs, if they have the opportunity. What deprives them of the opportunity is the lack of some amount of leisure time, because they are struggling to meet their physical needs, such as food, shelter and clothing (not intended to be an exhaustive list) for themselves and their family.
Can you elaborate on this? Are you talking about political hierarchy, workplace hierarchy, domestic hierarchy, or something else?
All of the above and including gender and racial hierarchy. Yes, these are big asks, but meeting the physical needs we’ve listed would go a long way to helping us take them on. Coining together to struggle for those physical, or economic, needs would help create community across lines of gender and race and again help us gain the skills to make the bigger asks. Also, we can eat the rich!
I recall a study once done long ago to what most common traits all animals share as independent organisms, as simple as the euglena (which they didn’t know for sure was animal or plant). Two characteristics could be determined:
Seeks to orient itself to its environment
Acts to move about as its own impulses dictate.
Sure, it would be great to have access to affordable healthcare treating life-threatening conditions, housing without mold blackening the walls, and adequate nutrition; especially in a world where other people are getting boob jobs, live in palaces, and eat like pigs (pigs who can afford $1K tasting menus). Doubly galling when, deep down, we know that fixing this is somehow possible.
But it would also be great to fulfill one’s need to not be wiped out by volcanoes, meteor collisions, etc. And maybe human cooperation is as unrealistic as that expectation. It’s too early to tell and we may not have time to find out before the next meteor.
But back to the euglena, too many humans are disoriented; alienated. It’s like someone read about how casinos don’t have windows and clocks so as to soak the suckers, and enlarged that to entire social systems.
And the level of restrictions are growing all the time. Sure, in 2024 you can jump on an intercontinental airplane as easily as you could a crosstown bus in 1954, but to do so you have to submit to restrictions a bee larva would balk at.
And that’s just the physical. Look at how much money generated by ongoing enterprise that’s has to go to servicing debt both public and private, and the extra amount of time and effort everyone puts into making money that’s going into the tiny number of people who actually own wealth. There’s a massive restriction.
As always, of course, Free Will is just an illusion. But the cost of staying alive so your mind can play with that illusion has its tipping point past which there’s only disillusion. That may explain all the little smashed plastic Fireball whiskey bottles in every parking lot in an America with more and more miserable people
100% this. A million factors have contributed: TV, then far more acutely, the rise of social media. People moving frequently for study and work, so they no longer know their neighbours. The slow demise of religion, the expense and difficulty of finding babysitters for parents, the increase in online shopping that reduces need to venture out to malls, high street and supermarkets, and most recently Covid closures and the rise in working from home. It all contributes to isolating people, and I think it’s notably worse for younger age groups.
Because almost all the once-taken-for-granted social connection systems are gone, one must now find or create new ones, and it takes effort – sometimes multiple efforts.
Churches are one of the best remaining places, because they already have multiple functions – they meet at least once a week, usually have a number of different kinds of things you can plug into at other times, from charitable endeavors to therapy to singing groups. For most churches other than evangelical/fundamentalist ones, you don’t need strong belief, you just can’t be violently opposed, and be open-minded.
Other than church, there are all kinds of other groups – walking groups, book clubs, model train fans, chess clubs, pickleball – which, if such a thing doesn’t exist in your area, nothing is stopping you from starting one up. It is probable that there are other people out there feeling the same thing.
My church periodically hosts a tea for people who live alone. That’s the only requirement. It is really popular.
I think we are experiencing an epidemic of individuals who have failed to reach a satisfactory level of self-actualization. I think it is extremely important t like who we are. It is getting much harder to find opportunities that allow us to reach that level.
Idk what area you’re in, but is there any kind of Atheist/Agnostic or Ethical Humanist Society Meetup group, or Universal Unitarian church around? Or just look into Meetup groups in general. There’s likely some group you’d find like-minded people at or people with similar hobbies.
In a 1943 paper titled “A Theory of Human Motivation,” American psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that human decision-making is undergirded by a hierarchy of psychological needs. In his initial paper and a subsequent 1954 book titled Motivation and Personality, Maslow proposed that five core needs form the basis for human behavioral motivation.
Though, in some ways, me invoking Maslow’s Hierarchy may be a bit of a copout, it is my sincere answer.
With some 7 billion people on this earth, the continuum of met vs. unmet needs is almost surely extremely broad. In emerging nations, it’s quite likely that the percent of populations struggling at Maslow’s 1st and 2nd levels are markedly higher than in the ‘advanced economy’ nations:
In my travels, I have met no end of people who were “mud hut, dirt floor” poor, but appeared to have extremely strong family, social, and community ties.
I have also known no end of people who were financially secure, but had strained relationships with family, few/no friends, and little/no time for outside pursuits.
Similarly, I’ve known people battling debilitating chronic illnesses who – with or without money – struggled every single day for sheer survival.
I tend to define the American Dream as: working too hard at jobs we don’t like … in order to buy crap that we don’t even need … in a perpetual struggle to keep up with people that, in the end, we really don’t like.
In the US, then, for people with adequate resources to meet their more basic needs (let’s just say their at 3+ on Maslow’s Hierarchy), I would opine that there’s an unmet need for meaning and fulfillment.
I would further opine that in our version of capitalism, service to self takes a much higher priority than service to others, despite the surfeit of research extolling the virtues and benefits of service. One example:
Or book clubs, or dance groups, or soup kitchens that need volunteers, or adult ed classes with interaction (art? foreign language?). Maybe the local historical society could use help? Organize a block party, invite all the neighbors, and meet a couple of them?
I have high social needs. In addition to living with my husband and adult daughter, i go to a dance at least weekly, play bridge a bit less than weekly, and watch TV with a retired friend most weeks.
