BrandSoul

The pyramid and the circle

Most of you have read about the famous Maslow´s hierarchy of needs. It is usually visually represented by a pyramid. The graphic is supposed to represent that some needs are to be fulfilled before others. That there´s indeed a hierachical relationship.

Dave Rothacker has shown his puzzlement for Maslow´s theory. He thinks he has gone through the basic stages to the highest ones and that the movement can also go in the reverse sense. That something remains from one stage when you achieve the next one.

As BrandSoul is very concerned with the depth experience of human motivation I´d like to offer an alternative vision of the relationship between needs and the soul. This alternative model does not have a hierarchical structure, but a circular one. It has the shape of a nuclear centre and its layers.

If you wonder how it is possible for hunger to be based on self actualization needs, you should remember the case of many disorders related to hunger and have to do with states of the soul.

Heinz Kohut, for instance, explained German politician Bismarck´s loss of weight with a similar model. For Kohut Bismarck´s need for an empathic relationship with another person was replaced with food. It is the soul´s self actualization that has a sense of priority.

Not your father´s world

This statement "Not your father´s world", has become one of the signs of the Tom Peters message in the last months. As simple as it may seem, I think being aware this world is not like the one your father knew is a very deep statement.

Indeed, it is not just about saying the world has changed but it is the world your father knew that has changed. It has a very psychological meaning. Our views of things are shaped in the first environment of family and sometimes the guidelines we get from our parents remain unchanged through a whole life. Not your father´s world is the advice to a new life. Perhaps your whole life has been designed to follow some patterns (pattern comes from pater/father), your father´s world´s and now it is just that they don´t work anymore.

It is very difficult for many people to acknowledge this kind of facts. So, be courageous, don´t worry if it really scares you.

Human and natural

Please, take a look at these photos.

Human

Natural (Thanks to Bernie DeKoven for the link).

Why not China?

Why Europe, why not China? Talking about navigation, Braudel asks: Why not the chinese ships, or the japanese, or even the muslims? Why not Simbad the sailor? It´s not technique that is lacking, the technical machine, indeed. Isn´t it rather the desire that stays prisoner in the nets of the despotic State? Then the merits of the western world are to be in need of the world, need of going beyond its own limits.

This beautiful description of the birth of capitalism was made by Gilles Deleuze. I like it as it stresses the need of going beyond the limits and keeping a sense of adventure.

Plato and the paradox of suffering

Plato´s cave allegory is well known by everybody. Still it admits many interpretations. The most usual is that once truth is achieved, error appears like an state of darkness, covered with shades.

I´d like to pose another interpretation, one that has a more existential meaning. In fact, Plato in his cave allegory talks rather about suffering than he does about truths. He tells us the following:

If the man is taken out of the cave and he is taken throughout the rough footpath towards the clarity of the sun, how suffering would it be to see himself being dragged like that? He would become furious.

This tale shows a condition we experience when we´ve been living in a state of suffering and there comes a new situation, in fact, a much better situation in life than the one we enjoyed previously. The new state usually is accompanied not by a sense of joy, but by a sense of pity. This reaction is instantaneous, but it is real for a moment. It happens like the light and the man in Plato´s allegory, furious for being fortunate.

Four functions of ideology

Post-modern marketing has an ideological side. Clifford Geertz identified four functions of ideology in groups of people. These four functions are: Catartic, moral, solidary and propositional.

The catartic function serves to the purpose of providing emotional escape to the tensions inherent in all groups.

The moral function helps people to hold a sense of stability in an environment of continuous tensions, by providing some kind of security or justification to the failures of individuals. It fills the gap between the wished objectives of the individual and the reality of his life.

The solidary refers to the ability of an ideology to keep the group joined.

The propositional refers to the action of the group as it makes possible the awareness and taking in consideration of their interests by other groups.

Don´t be a fool

Tom Asacker has written some interesting thoughts about the factical side of branding. Among them, he teels us that:

61% of clinically obese people surveyed recently in NYC don't think they have a real weight problem. Most said they were slightly overweight, and 16 percent said they were just right.

People believe that they are better than they really are, and they want YOU and your people and your business model to validate those feelings. If you're really
smart, you'll make them feel even better about themselves and their decisions.

I ´ve seen many times how an employee critiziced a customer based on his biases. Comments like

Everytime I say this they get excited, or they get angry.

Well, if you see everytime you do something you get a response of non acceptance, just don´t do it again. Don´t be a fool. A person with weight problems does know his state. For example, an attitude of moral judgment will not change his behaviour, it will simply foster hostility against you.

Just another advice. If you are doubting between judging someone and not doing it, just close your mouth. Remember Oscar Wilde´s advice.

It´s always better to look like an idiot and be quiet, than opening your mouth and confirming you really are an idiot.

A sense of adventure

I was talking to a friend last saturday on the kind of working experience we are facing these days in comparison with other times. He told me about a common friend who is a lawyer and finds it difficult to get a well paid job. He also told me about medicine doctors who, after studying a six-year university degree have few opportunities because all the posts in the public health system are still covered. And he told me about the careers that can be a way to a good position. They were very few, indeed.

I told him my own version of the story. For me there are no straight ways, no roads to a comfortable position. You can plan your life according to some expectations (for example if I study Engineering I will be a succesful proffessional) but it is very probable that they will change with the time. For me, life has taken the shape of an adventure. you just have to do what you like and try to be as succesful as possible. The times when a person knew that studying Medicine she would get a good position or have a comfortable life have ended. This is the time of the adventurers. I´d like to finish this post with a quote form Allan Sillitoe´s The loneliness of the long distance runner. It says like this:

It´s a treat, being a long distance runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad tempered or tell you what to do...Sometimes I think that I´ve never been so free as during that couple of hours when I´m trotting up the path out of the gates and turning by that bare-faced, big bellied oak tree at the lane end.

The program of a life

There´s one theory on human motivation I like most. It was developed by Heinz Kohut as an explanation of human actions watched through the lens of a whole life. Kohut tried to develop a theory different from that of Freudian man. Freud thought every person was charged with blame, in conflict between the biological rock of instincts (nature) and the civilizing influences of the social environment represented by the moral values.

Instead, for Kohut,

The essence of man is defined as a "homo psicologicus", that is, in its deepest level, the man who tries to start, and sometimes not with enough success, the program that lies in his depth throughout his whole life.

It is this inner program what interests me most. I find there´s in every person´s soul this intentionality. It is the development of it what can be a source of enjoyment for the person.

Performances on the web

Erving Goffman coined the term "dramaturgic action" to refer to the fact that our actions in a social context always become visible for the others. There´s always a sense of being observed by others present in our behavior.

I will consider the way in which the individual, in the situations of her everyday life, presents herself to others and presents her activity to others, and the ways by which the individual guides and controls the impression she causes in others and the kind of things she can do or cannot do to keep this representation to the eyes of the others.

I think this idea of represented behavior sometimes is too powerful as to determine a censorship in our actions or statements. Particularly in the internet, the exposure is absolute, but how does this influence in our actions?

Sigmund Freud also talked about the ideal-ego, as a representation of the image I would like the others to perceive of me and that can be a source of censorship for the individual.