This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Man is a perpetually wanting animal. These are the words of Abraham Maslow, the psychologist,

who in 1943 identified that humans have five basic needs.

On the first and most basic level is the physiological need for food and water.

The second need is shelter, a sense of safety and security.

That's producer Avery Truffman.

The third level is the need for love and belonging, then the need for self-esteem and respect,

and then the last final stage of Maslow's hierarchy is the need for self-actualization,

the desire for fulfillment and being all one can be.

But it's not like Maslow's hierarchy is a video game. You know, just neatly complete

each level as Maslow wrote.

Most members of our society who are normal are partially satisfied in all their basic needs,

and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the same time.

Which is to say, a complete gratification hardly ever exists for the wanting animal.

Maslow said,

a more realistic description of the hierarchy would be in terms of decreasing percentages of

satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy.

We will always have some hunger or another, and everything we want and desire in this world is

a manifestation of one of these five basic needs. In Maslow's words,

a desire for an ice cream cone might actually be an indirect expression of a desire for love.

If it is, then this desire for the ice cream cone becomes extremely important motivation.

Every day conscious desires are to be regarded as symptoms, as surface indicators of more basic needs.

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