What’s Human? Why do we do what we do?

No sooner do I argue that even human sexuality has transcended the biological than a bunch of status-seeking EPers have to take a swipe at old Abe. By Abe I mean Abraham Maslow, in particular, his hierarchy of needs, an idea dating back to the 1940s. Maslow argued that our needs could be arranged in a hierarchy with physiological needs at the bottom, then safety, love, esteem and, at the top, self-actualization.

I can't say that I ever thought of Maslow's hierarchy as anything other than a useful metaphor. And the New Agers and the Oprah-squad have been been busy eliding the difference between self-actualization and narcisstic self-absorption. But surely THE most important use of the pyramid was to assert that something beyond biology is driving us humans.

This current revision is just standard-issue evpsych reductionism. Here, apparently, is the rationale:

The new pyramid is based on the premise that our strongest and most fundamental impulse, which shapes our day-to-day desires on an unconscious level, is to survive long enough to pass our genes to the next generation. According to this school of thought, backed by considerable — though not irrefutable — evidence, all our achievements are linked in one way or another to the urge to reproduce.

In other words, aside from our powerful brains, we’re pretty much like every other living creature. . . .

“There is such a thing as self-actualization, developing your inner potential, a self-need to become brilliant at whatever you’re doing,” says Kenrick, who studied classical guitar before devoting his professional life to academic research. “I just don’t think it’s divorced from biology.

“The reason our brains work this way — the reason we’re always so curious, we’re trying to solve problems, we’re trying to perfect the product of our creativity — it’s because when our ancestors used their big cerebral cortexes in those ways, the result was an increase in reproductive success.”

Um, err, well . . . sure. But, I’m afraid, but not terribly interesting. It doesn’t explain important facets of our behavior, such as the sexual metaphysics I described yesterday. The problem is that we humans engage in a lot of activities that are intrinsically rewarding. They are pleasurable in and of themselves. We may also be rewarded for these activities in one way or another – including money, prestige, and, yes, access to hot babes and hunky guys – but the fact is devote a great deal of energy these things that is not proportionate to those external rewards. Why? Because the activity itself pleases us.

In the large and over time, yes, groups tend to reproduce themselves. And one reason they do that is, yes, to ensure the survival of their ideas and ideals. And when those ideas and ideals clash with reality – perhaps the reality of more powerful folks over there, with better weapons, or the wells are running dry, all of them – some groups prefer their ideas and ideals over the life prospects of their grandchildren. Crazy, I know, but that’s how we are.

Reproduction is just the outer envelope of biological possibility. The range of things we can do within that envelope is so large and various, however, that the envelope itself tells us very little about the specific choices we make. If we want to explain how individuals make those choices we’re going to have to look elsewhere. Self-actualization has become rather shopworn. So let’s replace it with something else even as we also revise the rather static metaphor of the pyramid.

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Meanwhile Elaine Howard Ecklund at Rice University has published a study showing that male scientists are more likely to regret not having more children than female scientists:

When asked about "denied parenthood" -- having fewer children than they would have wanted, many more women (45 percent) than men (24 percent) said they had fewer because they chose to pursue a scientific career. However, Ecklund said, "Men are harder hit by this than women. Not having as many children as they wanted has a more negative impact on their life satisfaction than it does for women."

I suppose the EPers might leap on this an exclaim: “Aha! See, we told you. Reproduction trumps self-actualization.”

Not so fast. The scientists did, after all, choose career over more kids. As for the regrets, we have to make trade-offs, all the time. We can’t have it all. Why? Because it is easy for us to want more than we can have, very easy. And so we have to make choices and deny ourselves things that would bring us satisfaction.

Whatever ‘self-actualization’ is, having it all isn’t in the picture.