The Human Condition Exposed Around the Election Cycle

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. - David Hume

Is the national election a telling barometer of people's en masse functioning with respect to the hierarchy of needs?  Perhaps it is, for you can observe large sections of party support and even third party supporters and surmise an aggregate sense of where people are in terms of needs on the scale of human motivations. Luis Durani in “The Teflon Don of Politics: Donald Trump andMaslow” strongly suggests that there is currently a large segment of American culture that hungers for a personality that produces a kind of drama that addresses their lower “base needs for security, including personal, financial, health and well-being.”  The very notion of the “American Dream” for any large constituency may simply be the next upper stage in their hierarchy of needs.

There are also those who are centered on vision for changing culture with creative foresight and want of leadership that shares in such pursuit of higher, more complex issues such as national and global economy, ecology, scientific innovation, education and—dare I say it—capacity for peace (vs. the long-standing, antiquated, conventional military industrial complex). I myself have experienced persistent shifting over the years with respect to how I view leadership based on my own maturation and movement toward self-actualization (human flourishing). I have come to appreciate a non-anxious presence in myself and in others, something that is revealed in times of crisis and in one’s everyday practices.

Of course, it would challenging to ever see an self-actualized leader elected as president, since less than 1% of the population gets to that level (according to Abraham Maslow). Perhaps the deep dislike of President Obama is due to the reality that he is closer to self-actualized, as suggested by some.  Caroline Presno lists the following self-fulfilling categories for which Obama demonstrates: possessing perspective, capacity to resolve dichotomies, being respectful and humble, problem focused, and understanding and acceptance of human nature.

If anything is telling during this election cycle, it is the instinctive need for safety and survival subconsciously driving a fact-bending way of seeing things. American political culture to the dismay of some cannot evolve into a multi-party contest (better alternatives) but rather must stay mired with strident, opposing views as people with whom we disagree—those who literally pose a threat. And so people overlook the flaws and lies of a candidate, twist and contort reality to fit their group’s view of, e.g., climate change, immigration, affordable health care, gun control, etc.

There is little doubt that lower motivational functioning is certainly at play this election. In past elections, you heard much ado about, e.g., the "family"; this election people at large are concerned about jobs, money, guns, ISIS. Out in the open are the magnifications of potentially dangerous aspects of the human condition and cognition, the exposure of salient vulnerabilities of peoples and the shear disappointment of many who find no consolation in the choices for leadership before us.