Motivations

Chapter 14, Motivations, discusses how people respond to situations. It is a bridge piece towards a larger discussion on what may occur if the Globalized business model is not altered. Based on the news coming out of Saint Louis, Missouri, it does not look like we have collectively come to grips with the darkness of the current socioeconomic model. Too many people are being gunned down out of fear. This is in the larger context of an overall reduction in crime across the USA today.

Wealth, Women, and War is released in accordance with the solidarity principals of Occupy Wall Street adopted on February 9, 2012.

Cliff Potts
October 9, 2014

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   Motivations

 The rest of this report will look at the likelihood of conflict arising from an unaltered globalization model. Thus far we have looked at two main factors. One is the quality of goods and services delivered to the consumer. The second factor is the availability of economic opportunity to the individual within a given geographical community free of favoritism, colloquialism, and arrogance to partake fairly in the goods and services available.

Relative poverty, as opposed to absolute poverty, is the inability to partake in the rewards offered in an economy because the individual does not have access to the economic resources necessary to exchange what is earned for what is offered.

Absolute poverty is where there are no economic rewards whatsoever, and there is no opportunity. The latter occurs in situation of region-wide natural disasters which cut off all economic support systems, or in times of war or protracted civil disturbance. A good example would be the famine in Ethiopia in 1984-1985, and the deprivation in Sudan.

“According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people die of starvation every day, and more than 800 million people are chronically undernourished. On average, a child dies every five seconds from starvation.”[1] Absolute poverty is still pervasive in the global community. The destabilizing effects of absolute poverty, like its related condition relative poverty, produce civil strife. Civil strife perpetuates absolute poverty as the struggle to acquire goods to survive continues. This further limit the availability of basic subsistence level resources, and creates a vicious cycle.

Where there are goods and services available but the individual is limited in partaking in those goods and services, then relative poverty becomes pervasive and oppressive. This will become epically true in regards to the accessibility of commodities, staples, and transportation necessities. Relative deprivation, being unable to obtain a secure source for basic life needs as defined within the social norm, in conjunction with the ideological argument of individual responsibility is a form of official indifference. Official indifference, by forcing an individual into a situation where they cannot meet their basic needs, is participating in a form of coercion. This form of coercion can, and often does, lead to violence.

On an individual basis, this can lead to crime, assault, and/or murder. It is not specific to the stimuli of economic deprivation, because it can be triggered by other sociological and psychological factors. Anyone put into a threatening situation with no visible means of escape may turn violent. The greater the perceived threat stimulus, the greater the propensity for a violent response. This was first observed by Walter Cannon in 1927 in the description of acute stress response better known as Fight-or-Flight response. This response is known to most police officers. The human being is programmed from antiquity to respond to threats to their welfare through violence, either violent reprisal (Fight) or violent action (Flight).

Within the social contract of civilization the flight response has been canonized, and the fight response has been demonized. People in the United States are taught to flee their attacker. This is best illustrated by the New York prosecution of Bernhard Goetz who shot four predators in self defense and was yet was found guilty of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree (see: People v. Goetz, 73 N.Y.2d 751 [Nov 22, 1988] ).[2] He was also successfully sued in a civil action brought against him by one of his attackers. The jury awarded the attacker $43 Million USD in damages forcing Mr. Goetz to file bankruptcy. The message was clear in the current culture of that; if you chose to fight you will be penalized by society. Today the message is getting a bit muddier, as regional differences are rising.

On March 27, 2007, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed a bill adopting the Castle Doctrine as the law of the land in Texas. It is to go into effect on September 1, 2007. This doctrine is derived from English Common Law. In effect it states that

“one's home (or any place legally occupied, such as one's car or place of work) as a place in which one enjoys protections from both prying and violent attack. In the United States, laws informally referred to as 'castle laws' can sometimes impose an obligation to retreat before using force to defend oneself. The Castle Doctrine provides for an exception to this duty. Provided one is attacked in their own home, vehicle, or place of business, in jurisdictions where 'castle laws' are in force, one may stand their ground against an assailant without fear of prosecution.”[3]

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Washington have adopted the Castle Doctrine into their criminal codes. Rhode Island has adopted it to go into effect November 8, 2008, and North Dakota is working on adopting it now. By adopting the Castle Doctrine states are acknowledging that some locations are consecrated to the individual, and they should not be forced to flee their own space when threatened.

While common sense and legal debate are often light years apart, the acceptance of the Castle Doctrine does give the individual the authority to defend his ground when threatened. It is hard to say whether the effect of the Castle Doctrine would have done anything for Mr. Goetz (he was riding on a public conveyance, and therefore not a “protected space”). However, within the mind of an individual, the right has been granted to defend one’s ground.

Legally based on the threat of violence, people are calling for the collective right to individually defend themselves. It is interesting to note that New York, at the time of the Goetz incident, had on the books the right to self-defense in a threatening situation, Mr. Goetz’s attorney was not able to successfully use that defense. Chicago is much the same way. The individual has the legal right to defend himself, but getting the courts to realize that self-defense is reasonable (i.e. would a reasonable person take such action?) is another story. However, it is being established in the legislature that it is reasonable. It is being codified into the social contract as defined by law.

While various states are acknowledging the natural tendency to fight when threatened, the effects of coercion as a response to economic deprivation is not being addressed within the structure of the law or the social contract. The U.S. is collectively failing to recognize the effects of its own official indifference to the poverty of others. On an individual basis this can lead to assault, brutality, and murder. On a sociological level, such deprivation can lead to social upheaval, and/or revolution.

Until the modern era, following World War Two, class differences regarding the quality of life were only a matter of degree. It has only been through the intervention of modern medicine, transportation technology, and accessibility to these, that the gaps in health and longevity developed. This is due to the levels of stress within dysfunctional communities.

While smoking cigarettes is socially unacceptable in polite society, for example, the tendency of those who have found they are considered disposable in society is to smoke tobacco regardless of the known health threat. This is the response of people who have for one reason or another seen life as a series of threats and serious challenges to health and survivability. The idea that something is risky in the long term is of little concern to those who live in risk prone environments. If an individual is forced to cope with a life of successive risks due to environment, then long term risks are ignored or discounted.

Those who have resources live longer than those who do not. It is interesting to note that in our individualistic society, even socially acceptable risk aversion behavior within the parameters of the social contract is not rewarded. The individual who successfully circumvents the risk within the environment is not necessarily rewarded.

This is supported in the study released on May 15, 2007 in Health Day News, which sighted that being “treated unfairly” leads to heart disease. The study further states that “Women and people with lower incomes and status were much more likely than others to feel they were being treated unfairly,” the researchers added. Feelings of unfair treatment were also associated with higher levels of poor physical and mental health. “Fairness is an important factor in promoting a healthier society…. “  The research is published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.”[4]

If one goes back in history to the Middle Ages of Western Europe, one will note that the ruling class, through the imposition of higher taxation or tithing, had the means of making life harder for the peasant class, but could do little in the way of extending life expectancy. Between 500 C.E. and 1500 C.E. the average life was 20 to 35 years of age. This continued until the early 1900s. The current world average life expectancy is around age 67, and decreases based on relative or absolute poverty. In the Western world,  life expectancy is between 77 and 80 years of age. In the underdeveloped world, it is between 35 and 60 years.[5]

 In the Middle Ages of Western Europe ease of life was defined as how much time one had to spend in leisure. It was not a matter of elongating life span. Those who had more resources had more leisure time; those who had fewer resources had less leisure time. The exposure to risk in the work environment added to the sense of life’s disposability by the lower class, but the extension of life was rarely better for the wealthy. The ruling classes were seldom less exposed to illness and natural disaster than the working class. Too, when at war, the rulers were honor bound to protect the lives of the peasant population. The castle was created as a weapons system into which the surrounding peasant population fled for protection during a war. When it came to plague, nutrition, longevity, or the ability to mitigate a natural or man-made disaster, both the peasants and the nobility were left to the fates within an environment.

A prime example of the differences today can be seen in the events following Hurricane Katrina’s landing on the Gulf Cost of the United States in August of 2005, and more specifically New Orleans, Louisiana.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall at the Louisiana/Mississippi state line on August 29, 2005. Those who had resources left the region before it made landfall. Those who were dysfunctional, invalid, or lacked resources were abandoned to take the brunt of the storm. Those who had the least resources suffered the greatest amount of loss. Two years after the event, the courts ordered the insurance companies to make good on their contractual obligations. This is making insurance companies a loathsome entity in the popular mindset.  

This disparity in the current era has been seen before. The Johnstown flood occurred on May 31, 1889, due to the breaching of the poorly maintained South Fork Dam, killing 2,209 working class citizens of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and destroying 1,600 homes. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club owned the dam, and “Despite the accusations and evidence, they were never held legally responsible for the disaster. Though a suit was filed, the court held the dam break an Act of God, and granted the survivors no legal compensation.”[6]

A similar event occurred on April 15, 1912 when RMS Titanic out of Belfast, Ireland struck an iceberg and sank. For many years, the gap between the number of people who survived and those who died aboard the Titanic has been summed up to the class on which the passenger assigned. It was said that “more men in first class survived than women and children in third class, or steerage.” Due to its international nature and the discrepancies in the ship’s manifest, the British Board of Trade established the number of dead at 1,503. The U.S. Senate committee investigating the accident set the loss of life at 1, 517.[7]

The popular perception of the callousness of corporate management was still not dispelled for some 95 years. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “The figures have been revised, officially and unofficially, so many more times since 1912 that most researchers and historians concede that they will never know how many of the people sailing on the Titanic died.”[8]

What can be said about the sinking of the Titanic, no matter what one can conclude about the acts of courage and desperation aboard her in her final hours, the corporate owners of the Titanic, The White Star Line, failed to provide enough life boats for the entire compliment of passengers and crew. Various reasons are sighted. Some say that lifeboats would clutter the deck, others say that it was not cost effective; the builders and owners consider the ship unsinkable. To date the sinking of the Titanic still remains an ultimate expression of arrogance and unbridled faith in humanity’s technology and achievements.

Those with the least resources in today’s society struggle against the systematic institutional indifference that spreads across all of society. In Johnstown such indifference cost 2,209 lives in 1889. Aboard the Titanic it cost 1,517 lives in 1912. In the Gulf Cost it cost 1,836 lives with an additional 705 missing as of May 16, 2007.

Daily life is perceived as being hard today. The individual is bombarded with the cries of the pitch-men hawking goods and services that are woefully out of the range of many. When catastrophic events do occur, those people with the least amount of resources are at the mercy and good-will of the few who live in luxurious isolation. The society developing in the U.S. is best illustrated in the Science Fiction classic by Robert Heinlein I Will Fear No Evil, written in 1970 and the exaggerated environmental movie Soylent Green made in 1973 staring Charlton Heston.

Today’s media is far less liberal, and far more inclined to support the status-quo. They attempt to appeal to a mass market, but the individual decides based on his or her own perception of the content whether the media is liberal or conservative. Today’s media tends to be more conservative, and tends to be supportive of the corporate citizen. .

Our media, controlled by the few to deliver the information resources to the many, is weighed down with somewhat distorted information. While the basic message is accurate within the limited scope of the moment, the impetus to rush the solutions to press first causes the information to be inaccurate and inadequate. The message of individual responsibility is very clear; the message about the social culpability of the corporations and the government is not. The real message seems to be: The individual must fend for himself because there is no social responsibility among the rulers of the nation. The reasoning behind this message is that if the well-heeled can “make it” than any individual can “make it.”

What is forgotten is that the media magnates made it by being somehow connected to resources that they take for granted. It is not so much that they inherited the position of power or responsibility. They had a connection which allowed them to achieve more. This is fact when it comes to Ted Turner, Rush Limbaugh, and Sam Walton.

Ted Turner took over his father’s billboard business at age 24 following his father’s suicide, and built WTBS into CNN. Rush Limbaugh comes from a family in the legal profession. Sam Walton’s family background is in financing, and he opened his first “Five and Dime” with a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law in 1945. There is no doubt that these men worked hard for what they built, but it is equally apparent that their success did not appear from a vacuum. As Kenny Newell, instructor at American Broadcasting School in Arlington, Texas is attributed to have said, “[They] were born on third base thinking [they] hit a triple.”[9]

If this is the case, then the consequences need to be accepted by the few who control the bulk of the resources. Before getting into a discussion concerning consequences, a basic understanding of motivational psychology is in order. For the purpose of this report, the discussion of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from the Wikipedia encyclopedia will suffice.

Rather than studying the most dysfunctional segments in society, Abraham Maslow focused on the most successful portions of society in his day. This study was titled A Theory of Human Motivation which he released in 1943. Subsequently this became known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or simply Maslow’s Pyramid.[10]

Since his study focused on the most talented people in his day, it has far more impact on our discussion. The current cultural environment has impacted many people of the same class which Maslow studied. Not only did Maslow focus on the likes of Albert Einstein, Jane Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Fredrick Douglass, he also studied one percent of the “healthiest” college students of his time. This is the same pool from which the corporation draws their current leadership. This would place his focus on people like Chuck Yeager, Ed McMahon, Bob Elliott, Henry Kissinger, Bob Dole, Bob Barker, and George Patton IV. This is a pool which is reducing due to age, but is the same people who laid the foundation for the status quo of the present era. They represent the parental generation of the same class of people who are now in power. Some critique his work as applying only to the Cold War era, however, the Cold War is not dissimilar to the current War on Terror.

Both the Cold War and the War on Terror have an indefinite duration, both are conflicts in ideals and world views, both are feared for sudden catastrophic events culminating in the deaths of thousands of innocent people without warning, and both are depicted in popular culture as the “good guys” against the “bad guys” in the name of the respective version of God. Since the Cold War runs parallel to the War on Terror, the motivations of individuals as studied by Maslow still applies.

In the most rudimentary form, each level of the Hierarchy has to be achieved before climbing to the next level. To put it another way, the lower level needs have to be met before the individual is driven or motivated to achieve the next higher level. Individuals can get “stuck” on lower levels through various internal and external environmental and cultural factors.

At the base of the pyramid are the physiological needs. These include breathing, food, sex, sleep, homeostasis, which is a relatively stable state of equilibrium or a tendency toward such a state between the different but interdependent elements or groups of elements of an organism, and excretion.

Food and water have to be obtained from the environment. While breathing is an autonomic response triggered by sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and controlled by the kidneys, it still derives its elemental function by acquiring something from the external environment.

Deprivation at this level will prevent any concern of needs at higher levels. It will also trigger a violent reaction outside the approved methods of class and social structure should deprivation become acute. Human beings have reflexes which will engage to prevent needs from being obstructed.

The next level is safety needs. This is security of the body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of family, of health, and of property. All of these social aspects of an individual are at risk if there is deprivation at the lower level of physiological needs.

The next level is on the pyramid are the love/belonging needs. These include friendship, family, sexual intimacy. Once again the motivation to achieve this level of need is based on the fulfillment of lower needs. This could very well explain why the United States is becoming more dysfunctional and violent. A loss of safety in the realm of employment, health, resources in general, can negate any maturation towards higher levels. If enough people are “stuck” on safety issues, then the drive to fulfill the love/belonging needs is muted, or negated. Economic loss negates the feeling of closeness, or the drive for closeness of the family. One has to conclude, therefore, that poverty is not conducive to healthy family structures, or healthy social bonding in any form.

The next level is esteem. For many people this is a rather rarified level. This is where one begins to fully integrate into society. This includes self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect for others, and respect by others. It is worth noting that it is at this level where individualism, so touted in the current U.S. culture, begins. Physiological, safety, belonging needs are acquired through the environment. Esteem, at the upper half of the pyramid, is where individualism and the individual self is asserted. It seems inappropriate to expect people who are experiencing deprivation at lower levels to function at the esteem level. Does a picture have to be drawn to explain why there was chaos during the Titanic’s sinking, or the landfall of Katrina? Stripped of any semblance of safety the individual functions at a lower level of social acceptability to acquire what is needed from the environment.

Since respect for others occurs at this level, and given the divorce rate, promiscuity, and the general lack of community cohesiveness, one can conclude that the U.S. today is “stuck” at the safety level. Not only are the “least” within society functioning to achieve safety, but the best and brightest in society seem to be functioning at that level as well.

The peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy is the much acclaimed, and often ridiculed, self-actualization. At this level is morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts. This is where the corporate American leadership is drawn from. However, when one looks at these traits and compares them to the functional population as a whole, one has to conclude that the U.S. society today is in a bit of a mess. Most people are not functioning at this level, and the source of their deprivation can be linked to level two of the pyramid. The lack of security in employment, a direct challenge to the corporation’s decisions to engage in global employee mining, for the most part cannot be achieved in oneself. It can only be achieved from the local environment. The lack of secure resources limits the healthy individual to be creative, to accept facts, to solve problems and to reject bigotry. When people are insecure in the basic resources of life, they are going look for demons under every rock, tree, or shrub, and see conspiracies where none exist. And there is a question as to what is wrong with the U.S. today?

To quote the Wikipedia article on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, “Innate growth forces constantly create upward movement in the hierarchy unless the basic needs remain unmet indefinitely”.[11]

Given that the population lacks the basic ability to secure their own individual food and water, and even hunting is limited, corporations are the environmental resource from which local communities draw their individual resources. Social responsibility at the level of being a primary resource to fulfill physiological and safety needs of people is well outside of the scope of the understood function of the corporation.

If corporations do not wish to be perceived as the field to be harvested, or the fatted calf to be butchered, then it is incumbent upon them to release the funding through wise investment at the local level to stimulate economic development, opportunity, and adequate affordable goods and services. However it needs to be accomplished, employment of all willing and able citizens and an affordable cost of living must be achieved in order to prevent the corporate entity from being slaughtered like that proverbial fatted calf. This may not be the role which the corporations signed up for when the executives attended Yale or Harvard, but history has a tendency to write scripts which have never been previously performed.

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[1] Starvation. (2007, May 13). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11:22, May 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Starvation&oldid=130619998

[2] People v. Goetz, 73 N.Y.2d 751 [Nov 22, 1988]

[3] Castle Doctrine. (2007, April 24). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:36, May 16, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Castle_Doctrine&oldid=125426371

[4] "Unfair Treatment Can Harm the Heart." HealthDay News 15 May 2007.

[5] Life expectancy. (2007, May 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:33, May 16, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Life_expectancy&oldid=130992601

[6] Johnstown Flood. (2007, May 9). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:32, May 16, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johnstown_Flood&oldid=129505833

[7] Titanic. (2007). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved May 16,  2007, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9126201

[8] Titanic. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica.  Retrieved June 18, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9380829 

[9] Personal conversation

[10] Technical college sophomore slang

[11] Maslow's hierarchy of needs. (2008, June 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:10, June 18, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs&oldid=220141139