Fear & Greed

check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

When one is in physical danger, or believes one is, then fear and greed tend to be the main focus. Some people feel insecure even if wealthy and in good circumstances otherwise, and their greed knows no bounds, and they always feel surrounded by potential enemies.

As I've always understood the hierarchy, until a lower level is met, there is no focus at all on the higher levels. Having spent two years homeless myself several years ago, I can attest that they weren't on my mind. Perhaps I'm just philosophizing out loud, but I'm wondering if there is a deep frame of fear and greed in the strict father figure model, that remains unfulfilled no matter what level has been achieved. Along the lines of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong. I don't know if the thought is valid or not. I spent the last few years trading for a relative's account, and came to see the old Wall Street axiom of fear & greed in real time, so I began to see many other things in that same light. Perhaps this is the cynical aspect of this viewpoint, or perhaps there is some validity to it...I'm not really sure. The terms themselves may be the real problem. I guess I'm just fishing for comments to see if I need to totally rethink, and/or cease using the idea entirely. Thanks for your feedback.

My understanding is that it's a matter of focus, but that all the levels are always present to some degree, not strictly sequentially. Hellfire fundamentalists, for example, are pursuing the transcendent higher needs and self actualization, but because the more basic needs haven't been respolved they do in terms of hellfire and such, and that's the frame through which it is interpreted. Some things seemingly happened in Mexico City a few years ago, widely reported to be in the sky. Some witnesses said it was UFOs, while other said it was the appearance of the Virgin Mary. What it actually was, assuming SOME reality to it, I can't guess at, but the point I make is that people interpeted it in their own terms.

With God, there is some impulse in people

call it spirit or call it some area of the brain devoted to transcendence, but whatever it is differnt people conceptualize God(s) in different ways. Some see God(s) as powerful entities to bargain with (even Abraham), others (deists) as an abscent creator, others as immanence or anamism, and others as a separate but active force. Simarly, there are different interpretations of what is "good" or the ideal. Some think it's being rich, others a peaceful world, others Heaven. Again, interpreted according to one's frames and assumptions.

People tend to see things largely in terms of "what's next?", starting from where they are and their current circumstances. When in pain you want to be relieved from the pain, but when you are bored you want stimulation. When the other "lower" needs are met you look for "meaning" and self-actualization. Yet people can also sacrifice themselves for some assumed higher good, and mystics have regularly subordinated physical needs to spiritual pursuits.

But what happens when your childhood is rooted pursuing basic security -- freedom from pain and want, and the essential safety, self esteem, and social acceptance and love -- and those needs are not satisfied? The mind become centered around those things, and those are the frames in which later experience is interpreted. The perceptual system itself becomes distorted so that even if friendship is offered the offer is either not percieved for what it is, or not trusted and assumed to have alterior motives. The "higher centers" which would process this are walled off from consciousness. Once someone is imbued with the idea that everything exists in terms of authortarian hierarchy and the only motives are threats and punishment, then family, business, society, politics, and even spirituality are seen and interpreted in those terms -- those filters. It become like people who not having learned or even heard a "foreign" language as a child (such as some of the African languages which use "clicks") not only can't produce those sounds if he tries to learn the langauge, but can't even hear them and distinguish the different sounds from each other. That kind of learing, outside of one's neurological framework, is like trying to recover from a stroke where a new neural pathways in the brain must be formed -- possible but very difficult. It's like a 40-year-old trying to become a violin virtuoso never having learned violin as a child.

Abused children have physical and chemical differences from others. People who grow up in strictly authoritarian environments likely also have physiological differences, even if it was not under what is not now considered abusive by the culture. There are genetic differences, apparantly, so that some people are more likely to succumb or break out beyond conditioning, and physical traumas can also change personality (cf PTSD). So we can look at this as existing on three levels: physiological, psychological (affective conditioning), and cognitive or ideological.

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Set an enlightened master on a hot stove and he will jump off, but then get on with his business of spirituality. Set a fearful person on and he will jump off and then worry about where the next hot stove is. I think that one can exert conscious control over these factors if one is able to reach a certain level of mindfulness, and/or compensate for them so one is not simply like a leaf blown here and there in the wind, but that the other factors can initially prevent a person from reaching that level of development, to varying degrees. "Free will is not a human characteristic, but a human attainment" I have said.

Carl Rogers' self-directive therapy is based on the principle that if a person is able to explore in a safe psychological environment then he can enage in growth process. If a child always lives ina threating authoritarian environment, however, then growth is impeded. Further, if the politicians put out messages of fear, and the nation is structured so that people are threatened by lack of money, then the those defensive, aggressive, and greedy frames will tend to come to the foreground. Many will revert to their childhood frames, where perhaps daddy was stict but their existence was not threatened. They seek the "strong leader", and even ignore the possibility that it is the strong leader who is actually endangering them.

As much as I love Maslow's need hierarchy, and I do love it, I don't think it's a good model for framing.

The need hierarchy has more to do with emotional responses than rational ones. Framing is a rational effort, although it may spark emotions. So, yes, greed and fear may be motivators, but they probably will not have long-term effects. To truly motivate, we must tap into people's core beliefs and show that what we have to offer aligns with their thinking.

When people believe their actions are in their best interests, they will be loyal to those actions. We've seen that in how the neo-conservative movement has turned those who should be part of the Democratic base into conservatives using issues such as abortion. Fear may have been an element of the message, but it was the matching of the issue to core beliefs that secured the relationship.

There is nothing inherently rational about a frame. (Actually, rationallity is a type of frame too, but I don't want to expand on that right now.)

I've observed that most people think in a mix of rationallity of emotion, quite often more emotionally than rationally. In various discussions it's noteworthy how many people are unskilled in detecting logical fallacies (and we don't teach that, or critical thinkin, in public school). One thing I have thought about, BTW, is ways to increase "emotional intelligence", because I think the emotional mode of thought (and intuition) can be quite powerful, and even solve problems which rationality can't. Often people make emotional decisions and only then look for rational reasons.

I don't think core beliefs

or beliefs of any sort, really, are rationally derived: I don't think "believing" is a rational or philosophically valid process; belief is thinking something true without evidence. Core beleifs are generally the result of what one learned as a child during a pre-rational period. I also think people quite often vote against their best interests. One's religious beleifs is a frame, but people generally hold those beleifs because that's what they were taught as children, not because they came to conclusions by studying theology.

Tapping into core beliefs is often not a matter of rationality, even if we use words in a semi- or pseudo- rational style. It has to do with image, identity, and propaganda -- emotional appeal. Rationally, the government has nothing to do with one's parents, either strict or nurturing -- and citizens are not children. To a Mr. Spock or a Data (from Star Trek) it wouldn't matter at all if you said "tax relief" or "revenue shift" or "trickle down" -- they would look at the numbers and data and come to logical conclusions. They would calculate the odds and consequences of the 9/11 type attack, and the possibility of other attacks, and conclude that nationally, on a per capita basis, it would be more rational to improve traffic safety or medical care since so many more people die from those.

With most people however, much of the time, rational thought is biased by emotion. (And for that matter, most people's emotional reactions are biased by rationality -- they resist feeling in some way because they believe they SHOULDN'T feel that way.) They mix thier modes and don't know how to separate them out. We need to look at the different modes when reframing so it works with as many as possible (rational, emotional, aesthetic, mythic, moral, magickal, transcendent -- or however you want to model it) and people don't discard the new frame for succeeding in one mode but failing in others.

If you look at Maslow's pyramid, what you have on the bottom is purely reptilian needs. There you must grab for yourself and in your most basic times, you will fight to the death to fulfill these needs for you and your offspring.

As you move to the top of the pyramid, you can begin choosing love. You take more risk in not getting the needs met below it, but gain more synergistic benefit as you venture to the top.

Fundie religion is all about saving you from hellfire, Liberal religion is about enlightenment and freeing others from their physical limitations and constructs.

Basically that is why Progressive first have to be about basic human rights guaranteed to all and can never allow torture even for the worst human being you can find. Matter of fact, providing all of the basic necessities and leaving a prisoner confined to stew in the upper eschalons of the pyramid could be argued to be the way to break certain prisoners. Of course now we have created a class of citizens who are happy just to have their basic needs met and some actually prefer the security of a cell to the hell of the street.

That your primary experience of life is through fear and greed is, I think, a product of the capitalist system we live under. I work for a socialist institution, the Ohio State University, so I have a different point of view which may be helpful to you. I am a tenured mathematics professor, so I don't have to fear loss of sustenance. The insights I learn and the ideas can I create are so exciting and beautiful, that anything I can buy pales; it is like sculpting in pure imagination. Thus i am pretty much immune to advertising and consumerism. My tastes are modest because I don't want to spend time involved with things. So my pay is much more than I require. Greed only makes you a prisoner of the things you acquire. Like the majority of scientists, I am an atheist so I have no fear of death (oblivion is not painful). The classes I teach are usually pretty small (20 to 30) so I can get to know my students, and it is a joy to give to them unselfishly and watch them grow into capable adults. These CEOs who make ten million dollars and don't retire at the end of a year, their psychology is just inexplicable to me. I think they must be mentally ill, although our society admires them.

The greed for power (driven by instinctual "mating rights") are the main motivators! Face it!
We're not that different from the groundhogs if you look at it carefully.