What, I wonder do you consider to be your most fundamental human right? Some might say, to be loved; to feel love; to be cared for; to be treated with kindness. In other words, to have one’s emotional needs and desires honored. Need as a basic instinct necessitates biological, emotional and spiritual satisfaction. Survival is its goal, for the group and/or the individual. At a primitive level it emerges as hunger, greed, envy, dependency, fear, hostility and the urge towards violence. When these primitive urges are directed responsibly to identified aims, they can become expressions of love, self-appreciation and self-assertion. Often, the human problem lies in the polarization of these instinctual forces where they become both social and anti-social drives.
It is often said, ‘just be yourself’, which suggests being one’s authentic self. And if this is a basic human right, what then, do we do with our anti-social urges? Do we act them out in the name of authenticity?
(The above has been based upon ideas from Edward Whitmont (1987) Return of the Goddess)
