Maslow introduced this set of human needs with a specific eye toward the individual. He classifies them into two categories: deficiency needs and growth needs. Deficiency needs relate to basic requirements to support life while growth needs relate to the enhancement of the person, and they provide something of a roadmap of just what enhancement means. This needs hierarchy gives some clarity to the concept of multi-level selection. In essence, by invoking stimuli according to the drive afforded by the individual levels, the efficacy of response is in direct association with multi-level selection.

On an ongoing basis, an individual person is subject to this set of needs at all times. Within our conceptualization, we would posit that these needs are considered, either directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously, with every interaction entered into by the individual, and further, these needs, collectively, are also to be found in the impetus for group oriented interactions as well. This leads to rephrase a question that we discussed earlier, and ask: “Is there a hierarchy of needs of the group?” In Chapter 1, we suggested perhaps the opening gambit in forming such a list when we noted the rather common admonition in both religious and secular groups, “Thou shall have no other gods before me!” This leads us to also pose a subsequent question, “Can the group impose its needs upon the individual such that individual needs can be superseded by group needs?”

Of course, the needs hierarchy also brings to mind the conveyance mechanism that we talked about earlier as a parallel to the DNA of biological selection. Perhaps the hierarchy of needs points us to a higher cognitive evaluation of the brain, a vector for individual selection. Furthermore, we should now reformulate the debate on multi-level selection, asking if a hierarchy of needs exists for the group, or if group selection is based on the combination of individual hierarchies of needs, and their complex interactions. Additionally, we note that even if a group hierarchy of needs would be formed, it would still remain necessary to investigate how it aggregates from individual needs. So perhaps for the moment we should stay with the individual hierarchy of needs as the primary guide of selection.

The lowest level in the hierarchy, physiological needs comprise the basic requirements for human life to continue. These constitute the primary deficiency needs of a person. Air to breath, water to drink and food to eat are at the very core of this set of requirements, and essentially in that order. Failure to satisfy any of these needs can lead to death, with the urgency of satisfying each being generally relative to the human body’s physiological needs. A lack of air kills within seconds or minutes. A lack of water kills in days and a lack of food kills within weeks, if not sooner. Consequently, when a person is placed within the limits of vulnerability for these basic, life-sustaining elements then the stimuli from these needs is likely to overwhelm any other basis for action or interaction. On the other hand, if these absolutely essential needs are met, then a person might be able to concentrate on slightly more mundane issues, like avoiding being eaten by a bear.

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