Karl Marx analyzed the relationship between human abilities and human needs. Abraham Maslow listed the categories of human needs. Goldilocks showed us that we must sample different experiences to find our individual point of perfect satisfaction between not enough and too much of what we need.
You probably know the 19th century English folktale of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” In its most popular version, Goldilocks is a young girl who enters the house of three bears in a forest while they are away. She samples the porridge in three bowls and finishes the one at the right temperature for her; tries the three chairs but only one fits her; tries three beds and falls asleep in the one that’s sized for her; then, flees out the window when the bears come back.
We all experience this every day: having to experiment before we find what’s right: the salt in the dish, the shoes at the store, the light intensity, the time spent with that person. We adjust. And again. Needs have both constant and changing aspects.
I do not agree at all with Karl Marx’s ideal of a communist society. But I will take his suggestion that we plan things a bit more carefully so that there is enough for everybody. I agree that it would be ideal if humans could “consume according to their needs”. But I would add “not more and not less”.
But what are our needs? Abraham Maslow dedicated his life to defining them. He classified them in broad categories: physiological, safety, belonging and love, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and transcendence. He also theorized that each one of us becomes gradually aware of one category of needs after another, in the latter hierarchical order. According to Maslow, we must have secured fulfillment of one category of needs before feeling the need for another, starting with material ones, and moving towards spiritual ones. I have my own take on this, based on my own experience and that of my clients.
If you are familiar with my prose, including my guide, Five Keys to Communicate Sustainability for Success, you know I am quite obsessed with the concept of “need”. Need is quite central in the basic 1987 UN definition of sustainable development: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. A need is very different from a want. Ideally, to develop sustainably, we must strictly align our wants to our (natural) needs.
Let us say that a need is fulfilled by a service, received from the rest of the universe, which helps us live and develop properly. We receive such services in these extremely broad categories: food, safety, love and community, knowledge, art, spirituality. Just like the seventeen categories of the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, all service categories are interdependent, and we need all of them, in specific quantities, to have a fulfilled life. Too much food can kill us prematurely. Too much reading, or meditation—at the expense of other essential things—can also kill us.
It is the less material services we receive from the universe that help us limit the more material services to “just enough”. And it takes enough experience to find that out. Interestingly, Wikipedia tells us that in the original story, Goldilocks is not a child, but an “old impudent woman”! Makes sense to me. An older woman is wiser.
Our needs are naturally limited. We must be intentional to find what our own natural needs and limits are. And in order to develop sustainably, we must have all our needs fulfilled so that necessity can coexist with sufficiency.
