Security, Sovereignty, and Success

American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a “hierarchy of needs” in his 1943 paper in the journal Psychological Review, "A Theory of Human Motivation.”[i] To describe the stages that humans move through as they develop physically, mentally, and spiritually, Maslow used the terms "physiological needs, safety, belonging and love, social needs or esteem, self-actualization, and transcendence.[ii] As generally interpreted, the hierarchy means that lower-level physiological and safety needs must be achieved before a person can move on to higher social needs of belonging, love, and approval, and social needs must be met before a person can achieve self-actualization and transcendence. However, Maslow considered the hierarchy to be stages of motivation rather than prerequisites.

Humans are motivated primarily by physical and safety needs until those needs are met. Their primary motivation then shifts to belonging, being loved, and accepted until those needs are met. Their priorities then become self-actualization and transcendence. However, Maslow understood that all these needs are important at all stages of development. Humans are motivated by their needs for love, belonging, approval, self-actualization, and transcendence, even when they face threats to their physiological safety or survival. The motivations for safety and physical security are stronger until those needs are met. People who feel socially, emotionally, and intellectually secure are still concerned about meeting their basic needs for safety and security. Their physiological motivations are just not a high priority until their more basic needs are met.    

The first requisite of authentic sustainability is to meet the needs of the present, which means meeting the basic human needs of all in the present. In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy, this means the needs for food, clothing, shelter, health care, transportation, and other physical or tangible necessities of life must be met before people can be expected to prioritize the needs of the other things of nature. Everyone must feel safe and secure, or at least free of avoidable physical threats to their well-being. Sustainability also means the social needs of humans for love, belonging, and esteem or acceptance, must be met—to the extent that society can do so. People will prioritize opportunities for future generations until their own basic psychological needs are met.

The second requisite of sustainability, to leave equal or better opportunities for those of the future, depends on Maslow’s concepts of self-actualization and transcendence, the highest levels of human motivation. Maslow defined the need for self-actualization as the need of humans to realize their full potential, or to be the best they can be. In terms of deep sustainability, the need for self-actualization is the human need to fulfill a unique purpose in life. If they do so, they will have made the greatest contribution to the greater good they could have made and will have lived the best life they possibly could have lived. 

Maslow referred to the realization of transcendence as the giving of oneself to something beyond oneself, as in altruism or spirituality. In deep sustainability, the commitment to ensure equal or better opportunities for those of future generations requires giving something of oneself to something beyond oneself, an act of altruism that meets the highest human need, the spiritual need for transcendence. Deep sustainability requires that societies prioritize their highest or levels of motivation, not to the detriment of social needs for acceptance, belonging, and loving, or physiological needs for safety and personal security, but instead as expressions of a willingness to care for others, including those of future generations, as well as to care for themselves.

Communities cannot ensure that everyone meets their physical, social, and spiritual needs.  However, communities can ensure that all community members have the right and opportunity to acquire the capability to meet their basic needs if they choose to do so. Communities can provide universal basic public services that meet the physiological and safety needs of all and create an environment where all can meet their social needs to belong and be accepted. Communities can’t ensure that anyone will love or be loved but they can create a culture that values caring and loving. The needs for self-actualization and transcendence must be met by individuals, but can be respected and encouraged by communities.

Security

A universal assurance of physical safety and security is essential to sustainability because even if we can meet our basic needs today, there is always the possibility that we won’t be able to do so at some time in the future. The future is inherently uncertain. What if we lose our jobs, the stock market crashes, taking our savings with it, or we get sick and can’t pay our medical bills? Even many who have enough to meet their basic needs today feel compelled to keep striving for more because they don’t know how much they will need in the future. The continued striving for more money helps drive unsustainable growth in the economy as people work longer and harder striving for economic security, longer after their basic needs are met.

Current efforts of corporate interest to reduce or privatize social safety nets, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, make people less economically secure and keep them working and striving long after their physiological and social needs are met. Students and young families are encouraged to rely on large educational and housing loans, which keep them in a precarious economic position. They feel compelled to work harder and earn more money, not only to pay off their loans but also to provide economic security for their families. People born into generational poverty may have large numbers of children to ensure that at least someone will be willing and able to care for them in their old age.

With the assurance that their basic needs will be met, regardless of their current circumstances, there would be no necessity or motivation for people to work harder or longer than necessary to meet their immediate needs. They would be free to prioritize their higher social needs of belonging and loving, and their spiritual needs for compassion and altruism which are essential for sustainability.

Universal Basic Services (UBS) is an idea originally developed by the Institute for Global Prosperity in 2017.[iii] The basic idea is to provide everyone with a range of free public services that would enable them to realize their full human potential. Using UBS terminology, “these services would ensure access to adequate levels of security, opportunity, and participation to meet their basic needs. Services mean collectively generated activities that serve the public interest; basic means essential and sufficient rather than minimal, enabling people to flourish and participate in society; and universal means that everyone is entitled to services that meet their needs, regardless of ability to pay (emphasis added).”[iv]

The UBS conceptual framework relies on needs theory and capability theory. The theory of universal needs assumes that if certain basic needs are not met, some serious physical harm will result. This concept of need is different from subjective feelings such as anxiety, sadness, or unhappiness. These basic needs are considered universal preconditions for effective participation in economic, social, and political life. Sarah Clark Miller developed the idea of objective, inescapable, inevitable, urgent, and universal needs.[v] Her list of material needs includes water, nutrition, shelter, education, and healthcare. “Intermediate or enabling” needs must also be met, beyond being available, to make these services accessible. Non-material needs include security in childhood, significant personal relationships, physical and economic security, and a safe and healthful environment.

Nobel economist Amartya Sen elaborated on intermediate or enabling needs in popularizing the concepts of Capability Theory. Sen conceives human well-being in terms of the range of basic freedoms and opportunities. People are not free to benefit from rights or opportunities unless they also have the capabilities necessary to take advantage of them. This concept is similar to Miller’s enabling needs, except that capabilities apply to non-material as well as material needs. The basic rights to food, clothing, and shelter cannot be realized unless people in need are able to acquire and use whatever is offered to them. The opportunity for higher education is not real unless students are capable of meeting the entrance requirements of educational institutions. People must first be free to develop their capabilities before they can exercise their rights and realize their opportunities. Whether they take advantage of their freedoms to develop their capabilities is up to them, not the larger community. Freedoms, opportunities, and capabilities do not ensure human flourishing or happiness. Lacking any one of these three, people cannot realize their full potential.

The capabilities and needs approach to universal basic services challenges the logic of contemporary and shallow sustainability which relies on economic transactions rather than personal relationships to ensure that basic needs are met. Unlike most current social welfare programs, UBS programs would not give money to people and rely on them to make choices that meet their needs or develop the capabilities to meet their needs. Universal Basic Income, UBI rather than UBS, gives people money and trusts them to meet their basic needs by participating in impersonal markets rather than receiving direct benefits. While such programs provide the benefit of consumer choice, they leave consumers vulnerable to profit-maximizing corporations that are masters at manipulating consumer preferences without regard to basic human needs.

UBS services would be delivered directly to people, by people, much like public health programs and public transportation, except the service providers and recipients would be members of the same personally connected communities. Those committed to deep sustainability would accept personal responsibility to ensure that the basic needs of all in their communities are met and that all have equal opportunities to fully develop the capabilities to meet their basic needs. The focus would be on ensuring access to enabling and capability-building programs for those in need as well as universal access to basic goods and services for all who choose to rely on them. The UBS approach would re-personalize, restore, and revitalize caring communities.

Every individual, community, and society has a different historical, geographical, and social context that affects what services they deem essential to meet their basic needs for safety and security. This challenge can be met by ensuring that each community has the freedom and capacity to choose and provide the universal basic services they deem necessary, so that all have the right and opportunity to develop their capacity to meet their basic needs and to reach their full potential. The unique needs of individuals within communities could be addressed by relying on local wisdom and caring personal relationships rather than impersonal economic transactions to ensure that the needs of all are met. Deep sustainability is rooted in the safety and security of caring and sharing relationships.

Sovereignty

The term sovereignty is typically used in reference to political issues, meaning to have supreme authority or freedom from external influence or control. More generally, sovereignty means the power or freedom to choose; to make free, informed choices, and the power to act accordingly.

To be sovereign is to be free to choose. Political sovereignty is the freedom to participate in self-government, to the extent one chooses to do so; informed choices without pressure or persuasion. Economic sovereignty is the freedom to participate in the economy, to the extent one chooses to do so; informed choices without pressure or persuasion. While communities cannot ensure that everyone will choose to exercise their rights and develop their capabilities, communities can ensure that everyone is free to do so—that everyone has political and economic sovereignty.

Economic sovereignty is a basic assumption of economic theory—that consumers and workers are free to make informed choices about what they buy and where they work, without persuasion or coercion. If consumers are not sovereign or free to choose, they will be subject to economic exploitation by sellers and their basic needs and preferences will not be met. If workers are not sovereign or free to choose, they will be subject to economic exploitation by employers and will not be employed where they could make the greatest contribution to society. Even if all other conditions of economic competition are met, economic sovereignty is essential for an efficient market economy.

Food sovereignty, which has emerged in response to economic exploitation in the global food system, provides a conceptual framework for creating economically sustainable communities. During a global Forum for Food Sovereignty in Sélingué, Mali, in 2007, about 500 delegates from more than 80 countries adopted the "Declaration of Nyéléni":  It defines food sovereignty as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems." [vi] Food sovereignty puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute, and consume food at the heart or central focus of food systems and farm policies, rather than submitting to the policy demands of free markets and food corporations. Food sovereignty requires both economic and political sovereignty.

The basic concepts of food sovereignty can be extended to include all basic services. Sovereignty, as it relates to deep sustainability, is defined as the universal right of all people to services that meet their basic human needs and develop their capabilities, through ecologically and socially sustainable means, and the right to define their own economic systems. Sovereignty puts the aspirations and needs of people, as consumers, producers, and citizens, at the heart of economic systems and policies, rather than submitting to the policy demands of free markets and corporations. In sustainable communities and societies, consumers, producers, and people in general would be free to choose if, when, and to what extent they rely on national and global markets to meet their basic needs and wants. 

If transformation change is to begin at the community level, as I concur it must, then sovereignty must begin with sovereign communities—meaning the provision of universal basic services and community self-determination. Sovereignty does not mean self-sufficiency or independence, but the freedom and ability to choose or interdependence.  Sovereign communities must have both the freedom and capacity to choose to participate in the free markets when it is advantageous to the community, but to minimize and ultimately avoid the necessity of doing so. 

A sovereign community could be organized as corporations, cooperatives, public utilities, or perhaps some new form of organization. Sovereign cities, towns, and villages would be free to develop and enforce their own rules and laws, as long as they don’t conflict with state or national laws. Current laws sometimes provide municipalities with political sovereignty, or “home rule,” but not economic sovereignty. Municipalities cannot protect community members from economic exploitation, as long as businesses meet the woefully inadequate legal requirements for consumer and worker protection. There is essentially no protection for consumers or workers from the persuasive and coercive pressures or relentless advertising and lack of meaningful alternatives that naturally arise from the corporate monopolization of markets.   

In market economies decisions regarding what is produced and where and how products are produced, processed, and distributed are made by different independent producers at each stage of the production process. Each of these decisions is incentivized and rewarded through impersonal market transactions. Multi-product, vertically integrated corporations gain much of their efficiency by internalizing economic decisions rather than relying on markets. They increase profitability by increasing their economic sovereignty.

Sovereign communities would need to function much like for-profit corporations but with a public rather than private purpose. For-profit corporations internalize many of their decisions, such as what assortment of products to produce, how much of each to produce, how to market each product, how much to charge for them, and how to reward those who contribute to each production process. Sovereign communities would need the ability to do likewise, if they are to ensure that the basic needs of all are met by economically and socially sustainable means. I have suggested utilizing the organizational structure of public utilities, at least initially, to create sovereign communities. Public utilities can legally internalize many of their decisions, thus insulating them from corporate competition.

Public utilities are typically used in cases that economists refer to as “natural monopolies.” For example, it’s logical to utilize only one electrical, water, or sewer system in a city or county. Single systems for each service avoid the high costs of building and maintaining the infrastructure for multiple systems. The existence of only one private service provider would constitute a monopoly, with the power to exploit its customers. Thus, the justification for government intervention on behalf of the public. However, public utilities are equally appropriate in any case of “market failure.” The inability of free markets to provide the basic services essential to meet the basic needs of all is a market failure. The corporate degradation and depletion of natural and societal resources are also market failures that eventually must be addressed.

In general, public utilities are legitimate means of providing any essential public service that competitive market economies will not provide. For example, in the early 1950s, many residences in rural areas, like my community, were still without electricity. Those without electricity typically lived on farms that would have required extending existing “power lines” for several miles to service a few customers who would use very little electricity. There was no economic benefit to be monopolized in this case, but this was nonetheless a “market failure.” The Rural Electrification Association (REA), a public utility, was established to provide electricity to those of us without power, regardless of the economic costs and benefits. Access to electricity was accepted as a “universal basic service,” rather than something to be left to the market.

Public utilities are often used to provide essential public services when private services exist but are inadequate to meet the needs of all, as in the case of rural electrification. Another example is public transportation, including buses, light rails, and even taxi cabs, which are either provided by municipalities or regulated as public utilities. In this case, public transportation competes with private transportation providers. However, many people can’t afford private transportation, a case of market failure. Public utilities are currently being used to extend high-speed internet service to rural areas. This public alternative competes with existing services provided via satellite. Such cases nonetheless address legitimate market failures. 

Participation in a public utility committed to community sovereignty would be voluntary, meaning community members would choose to participate rather than be required to do so. Since membership in a community economic utility (CEU) would be voluntary, a CEU could start small, with a core group of committed members, and potentially grow to include the entire community. Regardless of size, CEUs would still allow members to define and establish economic boundaries within which they provide specific public services by means that “insulate,” if not isolate, them from economically exploitative markets. CEUs would need to grow and form networks with other CEUs to blanket bioregions if they are to protect bioregional ecosystems from economic exploitation.

Municipal governments are often reluctant to cooperate, which presents an obstacle to regional cooperation. However, the creation of CEUs as publicly-regulated but independently operated entities would minimize the need for government involvement. This is the same basic model as was used by the early Rural Electric Cooperatives. Beyond granting legal approval to establish and operate CEUs, the only essential government role would be public oversight to ensure the utility serves its public service mission. The voluntary provision for participation or membership in any particular CEU would minimize local political or community resistance to the CEU as an imposition of government.

Separate utilities could be established for food, housing, energy, health care, transportation, soil and water conservation, education, civil liberties, etc., either within or across municipal boundaries and political jurisdictions within bioregions. Regardless, all CEUs within the bioregion would need to conform to a common set of guiding principles. A single umbrella CEU would ensure the social and ecological integrity of all CEUs in the bioregion as well as the universal provision of basic services.

To ensure that universal basic services or UBSs were provided sustainably and by means that meet the unique needs of people in different communities, CEU could be organized and managed according to principles that have proven successful historically in managing resources owned in common and used for the common good. Elinor Ostrom shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for her lifetime of scholarly work investigating how communities succeed or fail at managing common resources. She defined eight core principles that have characterized the sustainable management of resources for the common good—sometimes for centuries.[vii]

1. Commons need to have clearly defined boundaries, in particular, who is entitled to access to what? Unless there’s a specified community of benefit, it becomes a free-for-all, and that’s not how commons work.

2. Rules should fit local circumstances. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to common resource management. Rules should be dictated by local people and local ecological needs.

3. Participatory decision-making is vital. There are all kinds of ways to make it happen, but people will be more likely to follow the rules if they had a hand in writing them. Involve as many people as possible in decision-making.

4. Commons must be monitored. Once rules have been set, communities need a way of checking that people are keeping them. Commons don’t run on goodwill, but on accountability.

5. Sanctions for those who abuse the commons should be graduated. Ostrom observed that the commons that worked best didn’t just ban people who broke the rules. That tended to create resentment. Instead, they had systems of warnings and fines, as well as informal reputational consequences in the community.

6. Conflict resolution should be easily accessible. When issues come up, resolving them should be informal, cheap, and straightforward. That means that anyone can take their problems for mediation, and nobody is shut out. Problems are solved rather than ignoring them because nobody wants to pay legal fees.

7. Commons need the right to organise. Your commons rules won’t count for anything if a higher local authority doesn’t recognise them as legitimate.

8. Commons work best when nested within larger networks. Some things can be managed locally, but some might need wider regional cooperation – for example, an irrigation network might depend on a river that others also draw on upstream.

CEUs could be justified as a legitimate public service by providing an opportunity for those currently eligible for government assistance to meet their needs for food, energy, housing, health care, education, and other basic needs to be administered through the CEU. This would allow existing funding to be used to provide higher-quality products and services more efficiently to meet specific local needs. CEUs could be expanded beyond the needs of those eligible for existing government programs to include everyone in the community and ultimately the bioregion, much as public transportation is available to all today. Priority would be given to local producers and provisioners of basic goods and services who become members of the CEUs and are committed to their mission. Member-producers would be ensured reasonable profits if they provided quality goods and services produced by sustainable means at reasonable costs. Goods and services procured from outside the community would be subject to similar requirements. 

Despite efforts to keep costs at a minimum for high-quality goods and services, there would likely be shortfalls between existing government benefits and CEUs’ costs, even for those receiving maximum government benefits. The shortfalls would probably be too great for the CEU to offset from payments from those eligible for less than maximum government benefits. Participants could be asked to make up some of the difference by working for the CEU or by providing some other community service supported by the CEU. However, additional government funding would likely be required to maintain social and ecological integrity.

The CEU could also assist members in finding decent, dignified paid employment, with CEU provisioners or elsewhere in the community, to provide them with discretionary incomes comparable to those of others in the community. The CEU would strive to find employment that allowed members to work at things they were good at doing and liked to do that contributed to the quality of life in the community. Services such as child care, elder care, nature care, arts, literature, entertainment, and such all contribute to the desirable quality of life, and CEU members would be rewarded economically for their contributions. The necessities for a decent, dignified quality of life include the freedom to make some nonessential economic choices. 

The provision of economic and political sovereignty through universal basic services by community economic utilities would be a means toward the end or purpose of human betterment or flourishing. Deeply sustainable communities would be communities of choice but also communities of necessity. As Robert Wolf, an advocate for a similar idea for agricultural cities, wrote, “A sustainable, self-reliant economy developed at the grassroots level need not wait for the collapse of the current systems.”[viii] But if sustainable, self-reliant economies are not developed at the grass-roots level and linked to form national and global economic networks, the current economic and political systems will eventually collapse.

Success

A successful life is a life lived with purpose and meaning. As I suggested in Chapter 5, the dominant measures of success in contemporary society are wealth, power, and fame. However, wealth, power, and fame are defined by the few who are in relation to the many who are not. Even if success is defined by being the wealthiest, most influential, or most popular members of families, social groups, or local communities, the preponderance of people are destined to fail Societies in which most people can never expect to be successful are not socially equitable or just and thus not sustainable.

The logical alternative is that most people don’t need wealth, power, and fame to lead purposeful, meaningful lives. Everyone I have talked with who has spent any significant time among the people of so-called less-developed societies has remarked about how content and happy the people seem to be, living in circumstances that would make most people in the U.S. miserable. They have gained a new understanding that people who live purposeful lives in caring communities can find happiness and flourish with few material things beyond their basic material needs. However, people who are surrounded by conflict, civil unrest, or war find it difficult to insulate themselves from the inevitable consequences of others pursuing the wrong measures of success.

There has always been a strong meritocratic influence in America. Meritocracy is a social system in which people advance and succeed based on their abilities, talents, and efforts, not on wealth, family background, or social status. In meritocratic governments, positions of leadership and power are awarded to those who have demonstrated their willingness and ability to contribute to the greater good of society. The nation’s founders were not only all white men, but were also mostly well-educated, wealthy landowners. Voting rights in most states were limited to white, male, landowners until the mid-1800s. It took the Civil War to gain voting rights for Black males. Women and Indigenous peoples weren’t allowed to vote until the1920s. Immigrants have always faced difficulty in gaining voting rights. Merit, rather than discrimination, was always the basis for limiting rights to participate in government. Women, Blacks, Indians, and those without property had not demonstrated their worth by contributing to the economic good of the nation.

Americans have always prided themselves on the opportunity to succeed; to live “the American Dream.” We are told that if we work hard enough, long enough, and smart enough, we can live any life we want to live and be anything we choose to be. Admittedly, some have a head start on others because they are born into wealthy families. But if they grow their inherited fortune rather than squander it, they are still deemed worthy of high esteem. Particularly high esteem is ascribed to those from humble beginnings who rise to positions of wealth, power, or fame. “Only in America,” we are told, can someone rise from poverty to become the president, a billionaire, or perhaps a celebrity—respected, envied, or adored by millions. Success is judged by wealth, power, and fame, and power and fame invariably lead to wealth.   

At first thought, meritocracy seems like a good idea. We get what we deserve out of life. We are rewarded in relation to our worth. So, what’s wrong with merit-based societies? Nothing in theory, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to assess individuals’ contributions to the good of their society. As a default, meritocracies have tended to judge people by their contributions to the economy. Income and wealth become the default measures of merit or worth.

Both Republicans and Democrats proclaimed that the American Dream was still in reach: Their mantra was, “If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given abilities will take you.” The political solution to rising economic inequity was education: retraining of previous factory and clerical workers and access to higher education for everyone. Rather than lament the good jobs lost to globalization and digital technologies, American workers needed to prepare themselves for the jobs of the 21st century.

The government would provide “equal opportunity.” The outcome, in terms of income and wealth, would then reflect their inherent abilities, talents, and efforts. Democrats focused on affirmative action programs, particularly in government employment and higher education, to address the legacy of centuries of discrimination against women and minority groups. Republican programs focused on tax cuts and educational assistance for low-income families, without regard for race, gender, or diversity of opportunity. With equal opportunities to succeed, everyone would get what they merit or deserve.

So, why does America still have a wide and growing economic, political, and cultural divide? Did the government fail to provide equal opportunities for the less fortunate? Are there fewer people willing to work hard enough, long enough, and smart enough to succeed? Or are some people just lucky? There is some truth to all of these. However, government efforts to improve the American meritocracy may have increased, rather than decreased, economic and societal disparities.

With greater equality of opportunities, those who succeed are more likely to see their success as a reflection of their superior worth. Those who fail are more likely to accept their failure as a reflection of their inferiority or to blame others for their lack of success. Those who neither rise nor fall are more likely to accept economic success as an accurate measure of merit or worth. For several reasons, these conclusions are unjustified, but are widespread.

People are born with different physical and mental capacities and thus have different developmental potentials, regardless of their opportunities. Some are genetically destined to be physically weaker, regardless of how long or hard they work or train. Others will grow up strong, with little conscious effort or exertion. Some are born with brains hard-wired for either analytical or intuitive thinking, and no amount of education or dedication will prepare them to excel in occupations for which their brains are not equipped. Child prodigies in mathematics, music, and sports are extreme examples of how genetics affects everyone’s potential for success in specific occupations.

Potential is necessary, but not sufficient to ensure success. The potential must be developed. Being born into abject poverty, or with parents addicted to alcohol or drugs, or otherwise incapable of responsible parenting, has lasting impacts on their children’s future development. In addition, schools in low-income areas are typically underfunded and lack the parent support and involvement found in higher-income communities. For high-income families, preparing their offspring for success often begins with selecting the right preschool and continues through four years of college. Early-life experiences have lasting impacts on who we can and can’t become.

The emphasis on at least four years of higher education as a prerequisite for success has placed an additional burden on parents and children. Upper-class parents feel morally obligated to get their children accepted at an elite college to enhance their chances of success. Middle-class kids with four-year degrees from middle-class colleges start their careers with middle-class jobs. Those without a four-year degree take whatever they can get. Some improve their opportunities by attending community colleges or trade schools, but without a four-year degree, their employment options are limited. Those with only a high school degree, or worse yet, high school dropouts, are deemed destined to fail in the 21st-century economy.

As more students strive for admission to colleges, the percentage of students accepted has declined, and the cost of education has risen, making it even more difficult to reach the first rung on the ladder of success. Regardless, a four-year degree has become an official certification of merit or worth in America. Those with a four-year or higher college degree tend to feel they had to work hard against strong competition to earn it, and thus, deserve the prestige that comes with being a college graduate. Those who weren’t accepted, dropped out, or didn’t apply tend to feel that either they weren’t good enough or that the system was rigged against them. Either way, they feel that society doesn’t value whatever they have to offer, so why try?

Those with exceptional talents may find a way around the sorting machine of higher education. If someone has exceptional talent as an entertainer, as a singer, actor, or athlete, they may become famous without going to college. If someone has charisma or an exceptional ability to influence people, they may gain power as a successful entrepreneur, labor leader, or politician without a college degree. Power and fame are generally rewarded with wealth, so even for the powerful and famous, success or merit is generally measured by the ability to make money.

The wealth associated with power and fame is more a function of societal preferences than of individual abilities. Top players in the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL make millions of dollars a year only because fans buy game tickets and the products of advertisers who pay to broadcast or live-stream their games. Actors and musicians make fortunes only because millions of people are willing to pay to experience their performances. In earlier times and in different countries, performers of equal talent would be lucky to make a living. The entrepreneurs who have made billions from digital technologies would have had few opportunities before the invention of mainframe computers. And, the politicians now in power in Washington, D.C., would have been lucky to avoid prison in the 1940s. There is little real reason to award any special merit to those who were lucky to be born at a time and place that values their specific talent.

Even the most conservative of early neoclassical economists understood that a person’s contribution to the economy was not an accurate measure of their contribution to the good of society. Frederich Hayek, of the ultra-conservative Austrian School of Economics, wrote that there was “no necessary connection between merit and [economic] success.”[ix]  In the 1920s, Frank Knight of the University of Chicago wrote that providing something people are willing to pay for is not the same thing as making a truly valuable contribution to society; that “productivity contributions have little or no ethical significance. It is hard to see how being different from other people is more meritorious than it is to be like them.”[x]  Wealth, power, and fame are not logical measures of merit or success.

In the integral world of reality, where everything and everyone is interconnected, there is no reason to believe that anyone is any more or less worthy or important than anyone else. Each person has a unique path to walk, a purpose to fulfill, and a contribution to make to the greater good.  By walking their unique path of purpose, they realize their full potential in life. They are the best they can be. They meet their need for self-actualization.

People who live in societies that provide universal basic services and ensure political and economic sovereignty have greater opportunities to choose a life of purpose guided by a spiritual sense of connectedness that transcends their physical experience of reality and gives meaning to their thoughts and actions. Those who live with purpose and meaning are successful, regardless of whether they achieve wealth, power, or fame. They are doing what they are here on Earth to do, their lives matter.

The principles of success in deeply sustainable communities and societies are reflected in a hierarchy of intentionality that reflects the ecological, social, and economic hierarchy of sustainability and is consistent with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or motivations. The highest priority in sustainable communities and societies must be to respect and care for the other living and nonliving things of nature upon which the ultimate well-being of current and all future generations depends. We may receive some economic and social benefits from acts of stewardship. However, stewardship of the Earth is a responsibility rewarded primarily by the ethical or moral value that arises from fulfilling our purpose as members of the Earth’s integral community. Regarding Maslow’s hierarchy, stewardship of the Earth is motivated by the need for self-realization and transcendence, the highest level of human needs.

The basic needs of the Earth are predetermined and cannot be altered, and thus must be given priority by communities and societies. However, humans are a part of nature and whatever is good for nature is also good for humanity. Sustainable communities and societies must respect the basic nature of humans as social beings. Humans need personal relationships and a sense of belonging; they need to care and be cared for, to love and be loved. Using Maslow’s terminology humans have social needs for esteem or a sense of self-worth that arises from positive relationships with others. They may receive some economic or ethical benefits from their social relationship but the primary benefits are purely personal, reciprocal, and thus social.
Sustainable communities and society are free to choose social structures and values to fit their particular cultural preferences, as long as they do not conflict with their responsibilities as stewards of nature.  

Finally, economies are created by communities and societies to meet specific individual needs through impersonal relationships. The sustainability of economies ultimately depends on the sustainability of communities, societies, and the Earth’s integral community of which they are a part. Economies allow individuals to meet physiological needs, including safety and security, more efficiently and more fully than they could be met by relying solely on personal relationships within their communities and societies. The physiological and safety needs of individuals may take priority over social and ethical responsibility for survival in the short run, but a society that prioritizes economy over society or society over nature is not sustainable. 

The hierarchy of sustainable intentionality essentially reverses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Transcendence and self-actualization are prerequisites for realizing the need to prioritize long-run ecological sustainability over short-run economic extraction and exploitation. Caring and sharing relationships are essential for creating and sustaining ecologically and socially responsible economies. The basic physiological and security needs of all can be met only by communities that prioritize Maslow’s highest levels of human needs, for self-actualization and transcendence.

The sustainability of human life on Earth depends on a willingness to prioritize ecological, social, and economic sustainability over economic growth and accumulation of wealth. However, there is no way of knowing how much or how little good anyone is contributing to the greater good, ecologically, socially, or economically—who is deserving, and who is not. Everything anyone does affects and is affected by everyone and everything else. So, the best possible collective assessment of merit or success is ultimately the collective moral judgment of communities and societies. Who is seizing their opportunities and overcoming the obstacles in reaching their highest potential, and who is not?

We gain some sense of our individual self-worth or success through our relationships within the communities and societies, with the larger wholes of which we are a part. But we gain the highest sense of personal fulfillment or success through a sense of connectedness that transcends the physical level of reality, beyond space and time. We gain our truest self-assessment of success or self-worth when we transcend the physical reality of the universe and connect spiritually with the absolute reality beyond.  

End Notes

[i] A. H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation, Psychological Review, 1943, 50, 370-396.

[ii] Wikipedia contributors, "Maslow's hierarchy of needs," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs&oldid=1232957595 .

[iii] Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), Social Prosperity for the Future: a Proposal for Universal Basic Services, 2017; https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/igp/sites/bartlett/files/universal_basic_services_-_the_institute_for_global_prosperity_.pdf

[iv] Ian Gough, Universal Basic Services: A Theoretical and Moral Framework, The Political Quarterly, The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2019.

[v] S. Clark Miller, The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity and Obligation, New York, Routledge,

2012.

[vi] Nyelini Forum on Food Sovereignty, “Declaration of Nyeleni,” February 27, 2007, http://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290 .

[vii] Jeremy Williams, Elanor Ostrom’s 8 Rules for Managing the Commons, EarthBound Report,  January 15, 2018, https://earthbound.report/2018/01/15/elinor-ostroms-8-rules-for-managing-the-commons/

[viii] Wolf, R. (2016). Building the Agricultural City; Handbook for Rural Renewal. Decorah, Iowa, Ruskin Press. p 12.

[ix] Michael Sandel. The Tyranny of Merit; Can we find the common good? Picadore Paperback, New York, 2021. p 137.

[x] Sandel, Tyranny of Merit. p 138.