It’s Better to Be Safe
Steven B. Zwickel, 2020
I started thinking about safety last year when I read an article about a study that found wounded soldiers felt less pain as soon as they felt that they were safe. The idea that a psychological sense of safety could lessen the physiological sense of pain really got me to thinking about the importance of feeling safe.
A few months later I had a conversation with a retired US Navy officer who told me how important it was for the captain of a ship to be on the bridge and talking during tense times of battle alerts. It didn’t matter, he said, what the captain talked about for as long as the crew could hear his voice, they felt that they were safe. When the crew felt safe, it could follow procedures without hesitation and accomplish its goals.
When I was a grad student in social work, I remember learning about Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, first published in Motivation and Personality in 1954. Maslow’s theory was that people’s behavior is determined by getting their needs met, that those needs form a hierarchy, and the higher level needs can’t be met until the lower level needs are satisfied. If the lower level needs are not met, those become the focus of behavior and people stop worrying about maintenance of their higher level needs. In other words, a person who is dying of thirst, doesn’t bother too much with prestige or self-esteem.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model had five levels of needs:
https://www.businessballs.com/self-awareness/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/
The Hierarchy of Needs
5 Self-Actualization needs - high level fulfillment: realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
4 Esteem needs - things that make people feel good about themselves: self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.
3 Belongingness and Love needs - affiliation and connections to others: work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.
2 Safety needs - feeling secure: protection from elements, order, law, limits, stability, etc.
1 Biological and Physiological needs - most basic: air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.
The lower four levels are called deficiency needs. “These arise due to deprivation and are said to motivate people when they are unmet. Also, the motivation to fulfill such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied. For example, the longer a person goes without food, the more hungry they will become.”
McLeod, S. A. (2018, May 21). Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
The highest level of needs are called Being or Personal Growth needs. Many people don’t feel an urgent need to get these higher level needs met. Sometimes it takes a crisis or major life change to motivate people to try to meet these high level needs.
Safety needs are on Maslow’s second level, but the time has come to re-think the importance of those needs. They belong at the lowest level of deficiency needs.
Safety has become a major issue in the debate over racism in our culture. White people need to have the police ready to respond in order to feel safe. Black people do not feel safe when the police respond. Someone needs to find a middle ground where everyone can feel safe.
In 2020 we are living in a world where it is increasingly hard for people to feel safe. Millions have been thrown out of work. Millions more worry about catching a fatal disease that seems to be out of control. Who can feel safe in a world like this? We have been let down by the individuals and agencies that were supposed to keep us safe.
The failure of our government institutions to keep us safe—from the pandemic, from outside interference in our affairs, from internal strife—is a major malfunction, as Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence: the reason we have a government at all is to keep us safe.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
If the main reason for instituting any kind of government is to protect our rights to life, liberty, and happiness, Jefferson concluded, a government that fails to “secure these rights” should be altered or abolished and replaced by a government that is “most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”.
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For another view, see "Hey, America, Grow Up!", David Brooks (Aug. 10, 2023 The New York Times; Section A. p.22) The therapy culture has undermined our maturity. "By, say, 2010, it began to be clear that we were in the middle of a mental health crisis, with rising depression and suicide rates, an epidemic of hopelessness and despair among the young. Social media became a place where people went begging for attention, validation and affirmation — even if they often found rejection instead. Before long, safetyism was on the march. This is the assumption that people are so fragile they need to be protected from social harm."
