Fundamental Human Needs
For Clair who writes poetry; and for me, as I haven’t written anything worthwhile in a long time. You inspired me. 
Preface stolen and edited from Wikipedia:
Fundamental human needs, according to the school of “Human Scale Development” developed by Manfred Max-Neef aare others, are seen as ontological (stemming from the condition of being human), are few, finite and classifiable (as distinct from the conventional notion of conventional economic “wants” that are infinite and insatiable). They are also constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the strategies by which these needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system – i.e. they are interrelated and interactive. In this system, there is no hierarchy of needs (apart from the basic need for subsistence or survival) as postulated by Western psychologists such as Maslow, rather, simultaneity, complementarity and trade-offs are features of the process of needs satisfaction.
Manfred Max-Neef and his colleagues developed a taxonomy of human needs and a process by which communities can identify their “wealths” and “poverties” according to how their fundamental human needs are satisfied.
Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as:
Subsistence, Protection, Affection, Understanding, Participation, Leisure, Creation, Identity and Freedom.
Now for my part:
it’s a-fucking-stounding to me that after 14 years of servitude I came across a Sopranos episode a few nights ago where this philosophy was partially mentioned. I was, of course, curious as to what these so called needs were as only two of them were mentioned in the episode.
I read all about these human needs. I came to a unpleasant but unsurprising revelation which I will, for the purpose of my own amusement, articulate here.
I supplied or created the environment for which to exist subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, and freedom for my family. The only thing that I could not do, and in fact no human being can help another with is identity.
In fact I would propose that by providing all that I did, I in fact undermined the ability for identity to exist at all. It’s the goof of all time! (Thanks Al Pacino!). The underlying concept being this: when life is handed to you, and all of your ‘fundamental’ needs are met it is impossible to have an identity. And an identity crisis is precisely what took place in my family.
Oddly, in the process of providing to others I was deprived of, or sacrificed myself affection, understanding, leisure, and freedom. Yet because of my identity, and to a lesser degree creation, I was able to forego the rest.
It therefore is my experience that provided subsistence, identity is the next most fundamental human need. This in spite of the fact that Max-Neef claims that ‘there is no hierarchy of needs.’
So says I.
J.A.
3/24/11
