Human needs

I have always been interested in why humans do the things they do. I am fascinated by our wisdom and our stupidity, by our need for society and for individuality, by innate cohesion and seemingly intractable conflicts.

Without knowing what a human needs theory was, I spent year after year travelling, observing, and thinking about universal needs — about our similarities and differences. Then, in March 2004, one of my brothers-in-law was reviewing an early draft of Clear, Concise, Compelling and pointed out that I had written a human needs theory (without the thesis).

A 'theory of universal human needs' sounds a bit pompous, but it's an accurate title and the content (at just 73 words) is anything but pompous. And although I greatly value academic study and authorship, my theory is clearly not an academic one. But does that make it less helpful? I don't think so, but you can decide for yourself. And that's the key to my theory: accessibility — anyone can read it and critique it, which seems to me to be a helpful quality for a theory that attempts to identify and understand universal human needs.

So my approach relies on brevity and natural philosophy (observation, contemplation, logic), and my simple hope is that it proves useful. I have, in any case, put a peg in the ground.

We want everyone to have the opportunity to read, discuss, and criticize this theory. We have removed one barrier by crafting it into a truly concise theory (less than 100 words), but the barrier of language remains. To that end, we have translated the theory into Dutch (Nederlands), French (Français), German (Deutsch), Italian (Italiano), Spanish (Español), and Swedish (Svenska). If you would like to translate it into another language, please contact us via email at info[at]nakedize.com.