Grow your best life
One quote, huge meaning
What's really behind tensions in the world today?
CLZúñiga
6/18/20263 min read
This single quote from Alex Buscemi, Editorial Manager at Builders, explains why humans are failing as a species:
“Nobody in the history of the world has ever been insulted into changing their mind.”
The skinny is that insults, name-calling, manipulation, threats and displays of "dominance" don’t garner longterm positive outcomes for individuals, our country or our world. What they do instead is feed disrespect, distrust and disregard; anger, animosity and abhorrence; volatility, vengeance and violence.
Why? Because such actions contradict decades of basic psychological wisdom about what humans need to survive and thrive. They also contradict centuries-old spiritual teachings and wisdom about the nature of being human, including from Yeshua himself but here I poke around the psychology behind the tension.
There are numerous psychological theories about the innate needs of humans, from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to Murray’s list of dozens to Bowlby’s attachment needs to Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory and many others. Yet the one that continues to stand out to me for its coherence and applicability is William Glasser’s theory of five basic needs.
Glasser proposed that there are five needs so intrinsic to humans that they are built into our biology:
survival
love and belonging
power (achievement)
freedom
fun
For me, these five needs translate to:
having enough resources for safety, security, sustenance and comfort
feeling welcome, like we have a place here
feeling empowered, purposeful and fulfilled
being free and sovereign
living in peace and without threat
Since all human lives are entangled whether we like it or not, see it or not, or believe it or not, no human can truly access or rest into these essential needs until all humans do. Our interdependence on life beyond our own is irrefutable. We are interconnected, period. What happens to others impacts us even if it’s not in our vicinity, doesn’t involve us, or doesn't concern us.
It’s called quantum entanglement.
But since I'm not a quantum physicist, I leave that aspect to those who are. What this post dissects is the psychology behind our current reality. How did we get here?
You don’t have to be ‘crazy’ to be dangerous. A human living in scarcity, struggling to survive or to keep a loved one alive is vulnerable. A human who doesn’t feel loved or like they belong anywhere is vulnerable. A human who feels powerless, victimized or invisible is vulnerable. A human who feels stuck or trapped is vulnerable. A human living under threat or coercion is vulnerable.
Vulnerability often generates a sense of hopelessness or helplessness—both of which are trauma responses. People experiencing a trauma response feel desperate. They stop thinking clearly, rationally or logically. They become emotionally dysregulated and fragile, are hypervigilant, anxious and/or easily agitated, and can readily reach a harmful breaking point that turns to violence against others.
After centuries of life, how many such humans do you imagine are living in our world today? That thought alone should concern every one of us because it means we are all vulnerable and at risk of being personally violated in some way by another human. It might be a human whose essential needs have been neglected, ignored, overlooked or directly violated. Or it might be a human who is trying to prevent that from happening to themselves or their loved ones.
This global reality doesn’t lead humanity to peace. It doesn’t lead humanity to harmony. And it doesn’t lead humanity to survival. And although none of us can say with certainty where our actions are leading us, the growing number of mass shootings, species extinction, homicides and suicides make it easy to argue that it's not down a path of flourishing diversity.
The kicker is that humans can stop it. We are capable of meeting the essential needs of every human being on this planet…right now, not in the future. We have the science, the skill and the stimulus to do so…right now.
So why don’t we?
One possibility is that too many humans are still trapped in a delusion of entitlement, drowning in self-importance, or caught in arrogance to concern themselves with this reality. Perhaps they believe they are somehow exempt or that extreme wealth or self-service is the way to escape human struggle. But they are wrong. Our human struggle is an inescapable shared experience, taught by Yeshua himself to be spiritually transformational if we embrace it with compassion, humility and humanity. Just a thought.
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