Legitmacy and Maslow's Hierarchy

[TheCurmudgeon]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. When trying to determine what makes an average person decide to risk his own life to effect political change it seems that they have to be tied to a strong emotional response like the kind you feel when you suffer an injustice.

My quick reponse to this bifurcation is that the relationship between the questioning of legitimacy and the questioning of justice is not one of co-equals. Illegitimacy is a special case of injustice. In other words, the class of unjust things includes the class of illegitimate things as a sub-class.

I agree. The feeling of injustice results from a mismatch of personal values of how the world should be compared with how the world is. There are many ways to feel injustice, illegitimacy is just one of them.

However, I think people need to be somewhat more satisfied in the lower level needs before they will push the analysis to the second order of causation that I have suggested is required to sense illegtimacy. The history of revolutionary movements seems to bear this out; such movements typically have arisen with members of the more satisfied classes of society--upper and upper-middle class students for example. Their basic needs have been satisifed, allowing them the time to reflect more deeply on the causes of injustice they see around them.

Agreed. If you track Maslow's hierarchy with Schwartz' universal values you will see that Maslow's self-actualization needs roughly translate to Schwartz self-transcendence values (Piurko, Y., S. H. Schwartz, and E. Davidov. "Basic Personal Values And The Meaning Of Left-Right Political Orientations In 20 Countries." Political Psychology 32.4 (2011): 537-561. British Library Document Supply Centre Inside Serials & Conference). Schwartz self-transcendence values include universalism and benevolence, both of which have an altruistic component. In essence, you have to have your own needs satisfied before you start to care about the inequities suffered by others. In addition, at this level you are willing to sacrifice your own security for others. What I call the hierarchy of concerns - first you only care about yourself, then your immediate family, then your in-group, then all others (then things like you like animals and other living things like trees).

This means that there are two types of injustices at work. The first is personal based on an injustice you suffer. These are tied directly to lower level Maslovian needs/Schwartz values. The second is injustice suffered by others which only affects those who have had their lower level needs satisfied and now feel the effect of higher level needs/values.

I propose that neither the sense of illegitimacy nor the desire to act to remedy injustice usually arises spontanteously in most of us. It must be stimulated by someone else--the so-called outside agitator. The causal nexus for the apppearance of these agitators, when couched in terms of Maslow's hierarchy, is that such people have been unable to attain satisfaction of their love and belonging needs in what most people would considered a socially acceptable way. Therefore, as a method to achieve some sense of belonging, these people create a cause and convince others to join them in trying to realize the goals of the cause. The cause may be something relatively innocuous, like "Save the Whales." However, over time it may become much less innocuous as members of the group choose the means of achieving the cause's ends--mnoving from printing and distributing pamphlets to sinking whaling ships, for example.

I agree whole heatedly. My caveat is that this is both a personal and a cultural factor. Personally it is the individual who has a need to "fit in" and is a 'joiner'. Culturally it is associated with societies that are normally considered 'traditional' where tribe or religion (in-group) are still a strong influence on individual actions. Confusing the two can create a false impression of who might act based on belonginness (I prefer relatedness as used by Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination theory).

What the mechanism is that leads to the degeneration of the means to the group's ends into actions with less and less social acceptablility is not clear to me. I suspect that it might have something to do with the fact that the love and belonging need is still felt to be unsatisfied by at least a subset of those who join the movement, which becomes yet another instance of a feeling of injustice and requires the holder of that feeling to "act out" even more vigorously.

I believe it varies across the population based on their own level of needs/values both individually and culturally. This complicates things, but at their core is the same value/reality mismatch or sense of injustice, either personal or altruistic, that can account for a substantial amount of why an average person decides to pick up a weapon and engage in an insurgency.

BTW, are you in Boston?

[TheCurmudgeon]

This means that there are two types of injustices at work. The first is personal based on an injustice you suffer. These are tied directly to lower level Maslovian needs/Schwartz values. The second is injustice suffered by others which only affects those who have had their lower level needs satisfied and now feel the effect of higher level needs/values.

This statement is in error. Personal injustice can be tied to any level of need/value from basic needs like security to higher level needs like self-expression. But, it is only once you reach these higher level needs that altruism begins to take hold and you begin to be concerned with injustices suffered by others.

Also, what is an injustice is tied to need level. For example, in some societies inequity between the rich and the poor is associated with birth right. If I am born into a landed aristocratic family what is considered 'just' for me is significantly different from what is considered 'just' for a poor commoner. Those of us whose value system is based on individual achievement find this abhorrent. An example nepotism has been the standard for centuries, now it is considered passe.

[wm]

This means that there are two types of injustices at work. The first is personal based on an injustice you suffer. These are tied directly to lower level Maslovian needs/Schwartz values. The second is injustice suffered by others which only affects those who have had their lower level needs satisfied and now feel the effect of higher level needs/values.

You acknowledge that part of the above is in error in a subsequent post. I wanted to comment on the second sentence in the quotation. Its content seems to imply the notion that we can feel a sense of injustice from our observing the injustices of others. This seems like a very Humean position with regard to the origin of a possibility of altruism (phrase stolen from Tom Nagel's 1978 book of the same title). I'd like to understand the connection between the two forms of injustice as you see it, if any exists.

I believe it varies across the population based on their own level of needs/values both individually and culturally. This complicates things, but at their core is the same value/reality mismatch or sense of injustice, either personal or altruistic, that can account for a substantial amount of why an average person decides to pick up a weapon and engage in an insurgency.

Also, what is an injustice is tied to need level. For example, in some societies inequity between the rich and the poor is associated with birth right. If I am born into a landed aristocratic family what is considered 'just' for me is significantly different from what is considered 'just' for a poor commoner. Those of us whose value system is based on individual achievement find this abhorrent. An example nepotism has been the standard for centuries, now it is considered passe.

The force of these two quotations seems to push one towards acceptance of ethical relativism. Needs may well be relative; so may be the means by which oneseeks to instantiate one's values. However, I am unwilling to accept relativism of values themselves. To do so is to undercut the claim that we can be altruistic and concede the field to the Ayn Rands of the world.

[TheCurmudgeon]

You acknowledge that part of the above is in error in a subsequent post. I wanted to comment on the second sentence in the quotation. Its content seems to imply the notion that we can feel a sense of injustice from our observing the injustices of others. This seems like a very Humean position with regard to the origin of a possibility of altruism (phrase stolen from Tom Nagel's 1978 book of the same title). I'd like to understand the connection between the two forms of injustice as you see it, if any exists.

Put simply, the connection is in the power of the feeling to motivate a person to act to correct the injustice. Either one feels they need to correct an injustice against themselves (or their cohort/in-group), or they feel that they have to correct an injustice against others (Save the Whales). Either way, what I am interested in is what it takes to activate that motivation and how it can be mitigated or eliminated.

The force of these two quotations seems to push one towards acceptance of ethical relativism. Needs may well be relative; so may be the means by which oneseeks to instantiate one's values. However, I am unwilling to accept relativism of values themselves. To do so is to undercut the claim that we can be altruistic and concede the field to the Ayn Rands of the world.

Yes, I am a 'ethical' relativist, although I would not use that term. I believe that as a social group's needs change so do their values. As their values change so do what they see as ethical behavior. Ethics do not exist in nature, they are man made. I believe it has been an error to assume that certain values are universal and must be imposed on others, even by force, because that is what is 'right'. I am not a liberal evangelical.

I am certainly not an Ayn Rand fan, at least not of the "Virtue of Selfishness" stripe. I am more along the lines of Hume in that I base my ideas on observations of human nature (psychology and sociology).