system, a development arising with the mammals, gave solace to the corresponding need for relational belonging. Indeed, it was likely the emotional system that allowed for all subsequent facilities that result in social grouping. Emotions represent a characteristic that satisfies more basic needs while giving rise to higher level needs.

Esteem could only arise as a basic need whenever humans developed a capability for empathy; we must be able to place ourselves in others situations, to be able to empathize with the world around us, in order to establish our relative position within that world; that is the essence of esteem. As we recounted in the previous chapter, this facility can be appreciated in the context of mirror neuron constructs within the brain. Indeed, these constructs also provide an excellent model for consciousness itself, a fulfillment, it would seem, or a source of the need for cognitive satisfaction.

Human Needs – A Reflection of Human Ontogeny

The merging of emotional assessment into mirror neuron constructs offers a very plausible association with the aesthetic needs of the mind. This need establishes the foundation of subsequent social grouping in the form of trust, and its conveyance throughout the group. With the facility for metaphorical comprehension and manipulation that is intimately associated with these same facilities, we may hypothesize that the mind was finally geared to thoroughly exploit language, and subsequently to concern itself with self-actualization as well as having an enhanced capability to meet all the more basic needs.

Finally, the rise of cognition and aesthetics derived facilities allowed for satisfaction of a need for transcendence; a drive to go beyond ourselves and to project our needs and value systems with others, through the establishment of social orders, with religions forming the iconic example.

Human needs, which form the basic stimuli for human interactions, derive from specific physiological developments of the person. Social interactions in turn are derived over generations from the group interaction facilities related to those same needs. Henceforth, we say that social interactions are phylogenetic developments that give rise to the group, enabled by ontogenetic developments of the individual.

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