I have often commented on the needs of human beings...
Maslow's pyramid for example...where the bottom of the
pyramid is the biological needs of food, water, shelter,
education, health care.. these are basic biological needs
of everyone... and we have the psychological needs also,
of love, of safety/security, of a sense of belonging,
feeling esteemed, and we have another need, that is
just as prominent....and I would put this need into
the psychological needs, that of expression....
the need to express oneself..... we here at Philosophy Now,
are engaged in this need to express ourselves.... and we see
children engaged in expressing themselves... running up to mom
and saying, look what I made mom... and then having mom,
confirm, their existence with acknowledment..... ''Yes, hon, that
is a very pretty drawing''... with drawing being another example
of expression oneself....we can express ourselves in any number
of ways.. verbally and nonverbally....
because of my hearing loss, I tend to ''see'' people not through
their verbal expressions, but through their body language...
how we express ourselves through the emotions, we wear on
our ''sleeves'' as it were... and body language is far more
accurate in reading the thoughts and emotions of people....
and body language is just another way to express oneself...
so, I would list as a primary psychological need, the need
for expression... but we have other factors in this
area of expression... for example, at my work, and this is true
of most working environments... that the boss says something,
and one, me, feels the need to express what a stupid thing
that is to do what the boss wants.... now, the need to express
is strong.. but the need to be silent, no matter how stupid
the boss is, is even stronger... if one wants to keep their job...
and this conflict, of expression and not being able to freely
express, is a major source of internal conflict inside of us...
and this need to express or vent as the kids say, is one
of the internal driver of our being....
in fact, one of the major sources of growing up is the need
to find ways of expression without inappropriate expression...
in other words, we must ways to express without yelling or
violence or dehumanizing the other person....for violence is
a means of expression, but violence itself cannot be a means
of expression... so, that violence has to be directed somewhere...
strong emotions like violence and anger and hate, must go
somewhere... it must be directed somewhere... and here comes,
in some fashion, the use of random violence and the use of drugs,
alcohol, of gambling, and of other means of redirected expressions...
is redirected expressions the only cause for these things, no,
it may not even be a major part of these things, but it is a
part of these things.... of the excesses we commit in our lives...
a young child has not learned to redirect their needs for
expressions... a child gets angry, and the child responds to
that anger, directly and very quickly... and it takes years of
training, part of the educational process we humans goes through...
to learn to self-control... not to freely express ourselves...right
at the moment...
much of human behavior is based on our need to both express ourselves
and to learn the self-control not to directly express ourselves...
it is a balancing act we human beings go through... when to express
and when we can't express ourselves... a lesson not everyone
learns....
personally, I tend to express myself... I am not shy about talking to
people to the point of a confrontation... I would say, that I quite
often cross the line of self expression... and today, I am quite a bit,
more '''diplomatic'' than I used to be... every so often I've even learned
to be quiet... sometimes....
but all of this falls under the Socratic motto, ''To know thyself''
I know that my mouth tends to be my own worst enemy...
and I am constantly trying to maintain control over my
self-expressions...
so, how do you express?
Kropotkin