To satisfy their needs, people initially used only what wild nature could give them. But with the growth of needs, the need arose to learn how to obtain goods. Therefore, the benefits are divided into
two groups:
1) free benefits;
2) economic benefits.
Free goods are those life goods (mostly natural) that are available to people in a volume greater than the need for them. They do not need to be produced and can be consumed for free. These benefits include: air, water, sunlight, rain, oceans.
But basically, human needs are not satisfied through free gifts,
and economic goods, that is, goods and services, the volume of which is insufficient
to meet people's needs fully and it can only be increased as a result of the production process. Sometimes it is necessary to redistribute benefits in one way or another.
Now people live better than in ancient times. This was achieved by increasing the volume and improving the properties of these goods

(food, clothing, housing, etc.).

The source of the well-being and power of the peoples of the Earth today is an extremely developed mechanism for combining efforts to solve common problems, including the most important task - production of ever-increasing volumes of
life benefits, that is, creating better living conditions for people.
People use natural resources to produce the goods of life.
their labor and special devices (tools, equipment, production facilities, etc.). All these are called “factors of production”.
There are three main factors of production:

1) labor;
2) land;
3) capital.

Labor as a factor of production is the activity of people in production
goods and services through the use of their physical and mental capabilities, as well as skills acquired as a result of training and work experience. To organize production activities, the right to use people’s abilities for some time to create a certain type of benefit is purchased.
This means that the volume of a society’s labor resources depends on the size of the country’s working-age population and the amount of time that this population can work in a year.
Land as a factor of production is all types of natural resources available on the planet and suitable for the production of economic goods.
The sizes of individual elements of natural resources are usually expressed by the area of ​​land for one purpose or another, the volume of water resources or minerals in the subsoil.
Capital as a factor of production is the entire production and technical
an apparatus that people created to increase their strength and expand the ability to produce necessary goods. It consists of buildings and structures for production purposes, machines and equipment, railways and ports, warehouses, pipelines, that is, what is necessary for the implementation of modern technologies for the production of goods and services. The volume of capital is usually measured by the total monetary value.
To analyze economic processes, another type of production factor is identified - entrepreneurship. These are services that are provided to society by people endowed with the ability to correctly assess what new products can be successfully offered to customers, what production technologies for existing goods should be introduced in order to achieve greater benefits.
These people are ready to risk their savings for the sake of new commercial
projects. They have the ability to coordinate the use of others

factors of production to create the necessary benefits for society.
The volume of a society's entrepreneurial resource cannot be measured. A partial idea of ​​it can be formed on the basis of data on the number of owners of firms who created them and manage them. In the twentieth century, another type of production factor acquired great importance: information, that is, all the knowledge and information that is necessary
people for conscious activity in the world of economics.

Constantly improving the ways of using economic resources, people based their economic activities on two important elements: specialization and trade.

Specialization has three levels:

1) specialization of individuals;
2) specialization of activities of economic organizations;
3) specialization of the country's economy as a whole.

Man, like any living creature, is programmed by nature to survive, and for this he needs certain conditions and means. If at some point these conditions and means are absent, then a state of need arises, which causes the emergence of selectivity in the response of the human body. This selectivity ensures the occurrence of a response to stimuli (or factors) that are currently the most important for normal functioning, preservation of life and further development. The subject’s experience of such a state of need in psychology is called need.

So, the manifestation of a person’s activity, and accordingly his life activity and purposeful activity, directly depends on the presence of a certain need (or need) that requires satisfaction. But only a certain system of human needs will determine the purposefulness of his activities, as well as contribute to the development of his personality. The human needs themselves are the basis for the formation of motive, which in psychology is considered as a kind of “engine” of personality. and human activity directly depends on organic and cultural needs, and they, in turn, generate, which directs the individual’s attention and activity to various objects and objects of the surrounding world with the aim of their knowledge and subsequent mastery.

Human needs: definition and features

Needs, which are the main source of a person’s activity, are understood as a special internal (subjective) feeling of a person’s need, which determines his dependence on certain conditions and means of existence. The activity itself, aimed at satisfying human needs and regulated by a conscious goal, is called activity. The sources of personality activity as an internal driving force aimed at satisfying various needs are:

• organic and material needs (food, clothing, protection, etc.);
• spiritual and cultural(cognitive, aesthetic, social).

Human needs are reflected in the most persistent and vital dependencies of the body and the environment, and the system of human needs is formed under the influence of the following factors: social living conditions of people, the level of development of production and scientific and technological progress. In psychology, needs are studied in three aspects: as an object, as a state and as a property (a more detailed description of these meanings is presented in the table).

The meaning of needs in psychology

In psychology, the problem of needs has been considered by many scientists, so today there are quite a lot of different theories that understand needs as a need, a state, and a process of satisfaction. For example, K. K. Platonov saw in needs, first of all, a need (more precisely, a mental phenomenon of reflection of the needs of an organism or personality), and D. A. Leontyev looked at needs through the prism of activity in which it finds its realization (satisfaction). Famous psychologist of the last century Kurt Lewin understood by needs, first of all, a dynamic state that arises in a person at the moment he performs some action or intention.

Analysis of various approaches and theories in the study of this problem suggests that in psychology the need was considered in the following aspects:

• as a need (L.I. Bozhovich, V.I. Kovalev, S.L. Rubinstein);
• as an object to satisfy a need (A.N. Leontyev);
• as a necessity (B.I. Dodonov, V.A. Vasilenko);
• as the absence of good (V.S. Magun);
• as an attitude (D.A. Leontiev, M.S. Kagan);
• as a violation of stability (D.A. McClelland, V.L. Ossovsky);
• as a state (K. Levin);
• as a systemic reaction of the individual (E.P. Ilyin).

Human needs in psychology are understood as dynamically active states of the individual, which form the basis of his motivational sphere. And since in the process of human activity not only the development of personality occurs, but also changes in the environment, needs play the role of the driving force of its development and here their substantive content is of particular importance, namely the volume of material and spiritual culture of mankind that influences the formation of needs people and their satisfaction.

In order to understand the essence of needs as a motive force, it is necessary to take into account a number of important points highlighted E.P. Ilyin. They are as follows:

• the needs of the human body must be separated from the needs of the individual (in this case, the need, that is, the need of the body, can be unconscious or conscious, but the need of the individual is always conscious);
• need is always associated with need, which must be understood not as a deficiency in something, but as desirability or need;
• from personal needs it is impossible to exclude the state of need, which is a signal for choosing a means of satisfying needs;
• the emergence of a need is a mechanism that includes human activity aimed at finding a goal and achieving it as a need to satisfy the emerging need.

Needs are characterized by a passive-active nature, that is, on the one hand, they are determined by the biological nature of a person and the deficiency of certain conditions, as well as the means of his existence, and on the other hand, they determine the activity of the subject to overcome the resulting deficiency. An essential aspect of human needs is their social and personal character, which finds its manifestation in motives, motivation and, accordingly, in the entire orientation of the individual. Regardless of the type of need and its focus, they all have the following characteristics:

• have their own subject and are an awareness of need;
• the content of needs depends primarily on the conditions and methods of their satisfaction;
• they are capable of reproducing.

The needs that shape human behavior and activity, as well as the motives, interests, aspirations, desires, drives and value orientations that result from them, constitute the basis of individual behavior.

Types of human needs

Any human need initially represents an organic interweaving of biological, physiological and psychological processes, which determines the presence of many types of needs, which are characterized by strength, frequency of occurrence and ways of satisfying them.

Most often in psychology, the following types of human needs are distinguished:

• depending on the origin they are distinguished natural(or organic) and cultural needs;
• distinguished by direction material needs and spiritual;
• depending on what area they belong to (areas of activity), they distinguish the needs for communication, work, rest and cognition (or educational needs);
• by object, needs can be biological, material and spiritual (they also distinguish social needs of a person);
• by their origin, needs can be endogenous(occur due to the influence of internal factors) and exogenous (caused by external stimuli).

In the psychological literature there are also basic, fundamental (or primary) and secondary needs.

The greatest attention in psychology is paid to three main types of needs - material, spiritual and social (or social needs), which are described in the table below.

Basic types of human needs

Material needs of a person are primary, since they are the basis of his life. Indeed, in order for a person to live, he needs food, clothing and shelter, and these needs were formed in the process of phylogenesis. Spiritual Needs(or ideal) are purely human, since they primarily reflect the level of personal development. These include aesthetic, ethical and cognitive needs.

It should be noted that both organic and spiritual needs are characterized by dynamism and interact with each other, therefore, for the formation and development of spiritual needs, it is necessary to satisfy material ones (for example, if a person does not satisfy the need for food, he will experience fatigue, lethargy, apathy and drowsiness, which cannot contribute to the emergence of a cognitive need).

Separately should be considered social needs(or social), which are formed and developed under the influence of society and are a reflection of the social nature of man. Satisfaction of this need is necessary for absolutely every person as a social being and, accordingly, as an individual.

Classifications of needs

Since psychology became a separate branch of knowledge, many scientists have made a large number of attempts to classify needs. All these classifications are very diverse and mainly reflect only one side of the problem. That is why, today, a unified system of human needs that would meet all the requirements and interests of researchers of various psychological schools and directions has not yet been presented to the scientific community.

• natural and necessary human desires (it is impossible to live without them);
• natural desires, but not necessary (if there is no possibility of satisfying them, then this will not lead to the inevitable death of a person);
• desires that are neither necessary nor natural (for example, the desire for fame).

Author of information P.V. Simonov needs were divided into biological, social and ideal, which in turn can be the needs of need (or conservation) and growth (or development). Social and ideal human needs, according to P. Simonov, are divided into needs “for oneself” and “for others.”

Quite interesting is the classification of needs proposed by Erich Fromm. The famous psychoanalyst identified the following specific social needs of a person:

• human need for connections (group membership);
• need for self-affirmation (feeling of significance);
• need for affection (need for warm and reciprocal feelings);
• the need for self-awareness (own individuality);
• the need for a system of orientation and objects of worship (belonging to a culture, nation, class, religion, etc.).

But the most popular among all existing classifications is the unique system of human needs by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (better known as the hierarchy of needs or pyramid of needs). The representative of the humanistic trend in psychology based his classification on the principle of grouping needs by similarity in a hierarchical sequence - from lower to higher needs. A. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is presented in table form for ease of perception.

Hierarchy of needs according to A. Maslow

Main groups	Needs	Description
Additional psychological needs	in self-actualization (self-realization)	maximum realization of all human potential, his abilities and personality development
	aesthetic	need for harmony and beauty
	educational	the desire to recognize and understand the surrounding reality
Basic psychological needs	in respect, self-esteem and appreciation	the need for success, approval, recognition of authority, competence, etc.
	in love and belonging	the need to be in a community, society, to be accepted and recognized
	in safety	need for protection, stability and security
Physiological needs	physiological or organic	needs for food, oxygen, drinking, sleep, sexual desire, etc.

Having proposed my classification of needs, A. Maslow clarified that a person cannot have higher needs (cognitive, aesthetic and the need for self-development) if he has not satisfied basic (organic) needs.

Formation of human needs

The development of human needs can be analyzed in the context of the socio-historical development of mankind and from the perspective of ontogenesis. But it should be noted that in both the first and second cases, the initial ones will be material needs. This is due to the fact that they are the main source of activity of any individual, pushing him to maximum interaction with the environment (both natural and social)

On the basis of material needs, human spiritual needs developed and transformed, for example, the need for knowledge was based on satisfying the needs for food, clothing and housing. As for aesthetic needs, they were also formed thanks to the development and improvement of the production process and various means of life, which were necessary to provide more comfortable conditions for human life. Thus, the formation of human needs was determined by socio-historical development, during which all human needs developed and differentiated.

As for the development of needs during a person’s life path (that is, in ontogenesis), here, too, everything begins with the satisfaction of natural (organic) needs that ensure the establishment of relationships between the child and adults. In the process of satisfying basic needs, children develop needs for communication and cognition, on the basis of which other social needs appear. The process of upbringing has an important influence on the development and formation of needs in childhood, thanks to which the correction and replacement of destructive needs is carried out.

Development and formation of human needs according to the opinion of A.G. Kovaleva must obey the following rules:

• needs arise and are strengthened through the practice and systematicity of consumption (that is, the formation of a habit);
• the development of needs is possible in conditions of expanded reproduction in the presence of various means and methods of satisfying them (the emergence of needs in the process of activity);
• the formation of needs occurs more comfortably if the activity necessary for this does not exhaust the child (ease, simplicity and a positive emotional attitude);
• the development of needs is significantly influenced by the transition from reproductive to creative activity;
• the need will be strengthened if the child sees its significance, both personally and socially (appraisal and encouragement).

In addressing the issue of the formation of human needs, it is necessary to return to the hierarchy of needs of A. Maslow, who argued that all human needs are given to him in a hierarchical organization at certain levels. Thus, every person from the moment of his birth in the process of growing up and developing his personality will consistently manifest seven classes (of course, this is ideal) of needs, starting from the most primitive (physiological) needs and ending with the need for self-actualization (the desire for maximum realization personality of all its potentialities, the fullest life), and some aspects of this need begin to appear no earlier than adolescence.

According to A. Maslow, a person’s life at a higher level of needs provides him with the greatest biological efficiency and, accordingly, a longer life, better health, better sleep and appetite. Thus, goal of satisfying needs basic – the desire for the emergence of higher needs in a person (for knowledge, self-development and self-actualization).

Basic ways and means of satisfying needs

Satisfying a person’s needs is an important condition not only for his comfortable existence, but also for his survival, because if organic needs are not satisfied, a person will die in the biological sense, and if spiritual needs are not satisfied, then the personality dies as a social entity. People, satisfying different needs, learn different ways and acquire a variety of means to achieve this goal. Therefore, depending on the environment, conditions and the individual himself, the goal of satisfying needs and the methods for achieving it will vary.

In psychology, the most popular ways and means of satisfying needs are:

• in the mechanism of formation of individual ways to satisfy their needs(in the process of learning, the formation of various connections between stimuli and subsequent analogy);
• in the process of individualizing ways and means of satisfying basic needs, which act as mechanisms for the development and formation of new needs (the very methods of satisfying needs can turn into them themselves, that is, new needs appear);
• in specifying ways and means of meeting needs(one method or several are consolidated, with the help of which human needs are satisfied);
• in the process of mentalization of needs(awareness of the content or some aspects of the need);
• in the socialization of ways and means of satisfying needs(their subordination to the values ​​of culture and norms of society occurs).

So, at the basis of any human activity and activity there is always some kind of need, which finds its manifestation in motives, and it is the needs that are the motivating force that pushes a person to movement and development.

• The problem of meeting human needs
• Plan
• Introduction
• 1. General characteristics of needs
• 2. Law of increasing needs
• 3. Man in primitive society
• 4. The first civilizations and the "Axial Age"
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Introduction

Any creature living on earth, be it a plant or an animal, fully lives or exists only if it or the surrounding world meets certain conditions. These conditions create a consensus, which is felt as satisfaction, so it is possible to talk about consumption border, a state of all people in which their needs are maximally saturated.

The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that meeting needs is the goal of any human activity. He works to provide himself with food, clothing, rest, and entertainment. And even an act that seems to have no benefit to a person actually has a reason. For example, alms, for the one who gives it, is the satisfaction of his highest needs associated with his psyche.

Needs are the need for some good that has utility for a particular person. In such a broad sense, needs are the subject of research not only in social sciences, but also in natural sciences, in particular biology, psychology, and medicine.

The needs of society are a sociological category based on collective habits, that is, what came from our ancestors and is so deeply rooted in society that it exists in the subconscious. This is what is interesting about needs that depend on the subconscious and cannot be analyzed when considering a specific individual. They need to be considered globally, in relation to society.

Goods are needed to satisfy needs. Accordingly, economic needs are those for which economic benefits are necessary. In other words economic needs- that part of human need, the satisfaction of which requires the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods. From this we can conclude that any person needs the economic sphere to satisfy at least his primary needs. Any person, be it a celebrity, scientist, singer, musician, politician, president, first of all depends on his natural origin, which means he concerns the economic life of society, and cannot create, create, lead without touching the economic sphere.

A person's needs can be defined as a state of dissatisfaction or need that he strives to overcome. It is this state of dissatisfaction that forces a person to make certain efforts, that is, to carry out production activities.

1. General characteristics of needs

The state of feeling of lack is typical for any person. Initially, this state is vague, the exact reason for this state is unclear, but at the next stage it is specified, and it becomes clear what goods or services are needed. This feeling depends on the inner world of a particular person. The latter includes taste preferences, upbringing, national, historical background, and geographical conditions.

Psychology considers needs as a special mental state of an individual, the dissatisfaction he feels, which is reflected in the human psyche as a result of the discrepancy between the internal and external conditions of activity.

Social sciences study the socio-economic aspect of needs. Economics, in particular, studies social needs.

Social needs- needs that arise in the process of development of society as a whole, its individual members, and socio-economic groups of the population. They experience the influence of the production relations of the socio-economic formation under which they take shape and develop.

Social needs are divided into two large groups: the needs of society and the population (personal needs).

Society's needs determined by the need to ensure conditions for its functioning and development. These include production needs, public administration, providing constitutional guarantees to members of society, environmental protection, defense, etc. Udaltsova M.V., Averchenko L.K. Serviceology. Man and his needs: Proc. allowance. - Novosibirsk, 2002..

Production needs are most closely related to the economic activity of society.

Production needs stem from the requirements for the most efficient functioning of social production. They include the needs of individual enterprises and sectors of the national economy for labor, raw materials, equipment, materials for production, the need for production management at different levels - workshop, site, enterprise, sector of the national economy as a whole.

These needs are satisfied in the process of economic activity of enterprises and industries that are interconnected as producers and consumers.

Personal needs arise and develop in the process of human life. They act as a person’s conscious desire to achieve objectively necessary living conditions that ensure complete well-being and comprehensive development of the individual.

Being a category of social consciousness, personal needs also act as a specific economic category that expresses social relations between people regarding the production, exchange and use of material and spiritual goods and services.

Personal needs are active in nature and serve as an incentive for human activity. The latter is ultimately always aimed at satisfying needs: while carrying out his activities, a person strives to satisfy them more fully.

The classification of needs is extremely diverse. Many economists have made attempts to “sort out” the diversity of people’s needs. Thus, A. Marshall, an outstanding representative of the neoclassical school, citing the German economist Gemmmann, notes that needs can be divided into absolute and relative, higher and lower, urgent and can be deferred, direct and indirect, present and future, etc. In educational economics literature often uses the division of needs into primary(lower) And secondary (higher). By primary we mean a person’s needs for food, drink, clothing, etc. Secondary needs are mainly associated with the spiritual intellectual activity of a person - the need for education, art, entertainment, etc. This division is to a certain extent arbitrary: luxurious clothing of the “new Russian” "is not necessarily associated with the satisfaction of primary needs, but rather with representative functions or so-called prestigious consumption. In addition, the division of needs into primary and secondary is purely individual for each individual person: for some, reading is a primary need, for the sake of which they can deny themselves the need for clothing or housing (at least partially).

The unity of social needs (including personal ones), characterized by internal relationships, is called system of needs. Marx wrote: “...various needs are internally interconnected into one natural system...”

The system of personal needs is a hierarchically organized structure. It highlights first-order needs, their satisfaction forms the basis of human life. The needs of subsequent orders are satisfied after a certain degree of saturation of the needs of the first order occurs.

A distinctive feature of the system of personal needs is that the types of needs included in it are not interchangeable. For example, full satisfaction of the need for food cannot replace the need to satisfy the need for housing, clothing or spiritual needs. Substitutability occurs only in relation to specific goods that serve to satisfy certain types of needs.

The importance of the system of needs is that a person or society as a whole has a set of needs, each of which requires its own satisfaction.

2. Law of increasing needs

The law of increasing needs is the economic law of the movement of needs. It manifests itself in an increase in the level and qualitative improvement of needs.

This is a universal law that operates in all socio-economic formations. The needs of all social strata and population groups, and each of their representatives separately, are subject to it. But the specific forms of manifestation of this law, the intensity, scope and nature of its action depend on the form of ownership of the means of production, the level of development of the productive forces and the prevailing relations of production.

A change in the form of ownership and the birth of a new method of social production always serve as an incentive and condition for a more complete manifestation of the law of increasing needs, increasing intensity and expanding the scope of its action.

Under the influence of the development of productive forces, scientific and technological progress, needs are constantly growing within the framework of one socio-economic formation.

The main directions in which personal needs are developing, determined by the action of this law, are as follows: growth of their total volume; complication, integration into large complexes; qualitative changes in the structure, expressed in the accelerated growth of progressive needs based on the full satisfaction of the most necessary and urgent needs, the accelerated growth of needs for new high-quality goods and services; uniform increase in the needs of all social strata and the associated smoothing of socio-economic differences in the level and structure of personal needs; bringing personal needs closer to reasonable, scientifically based consumption guidelines.

Stages of development of needs - stages that needs go through in the process of development. There are four stages: the emergence of a need, its intensive development, stabilization and extinction.

The concept of stages is most applicable to the needs for specific products. The need for each new product goes through all these stages. At first, at its inception, the need exists as if in potency, mainly among persons associated with the development and experimental testing of a new product.

Once it is mastered for mass production, demand begins to increase rapidly. This corresponds to the stage of intensive development of the need.

Then, as production and consumption of a product grows, the need for it stabilizes, becoming a habit for most consumers.

The development of scientific and technological progress leads to the creation of more advanced items that satisfy the same need. As a result, the need for a specific product enters the stage of extinction and begins to decline. At the same time, a need arises for an improved product, which, just like the previous one, alternately goes through all the stages considered.

This law is based on the needs of a particular person, and they characterize the needs of the entire society. And at the same time, this law is the driving force of economic growth, due to the fact that a person always needs more than he has achieved.

3. Man in primitive society Conducted in the 19th-20th centuries. Ethnographic studies of tribes still living in a primitive society make it possible to quite completely and reliably reconstruct the way of life of a person of that era. Primitive man deeply felt his connection with nature and unity with his fellow tribesmen. The awareness of oneself as a separate, independent person has not yet occurred. Long before the feeling of one’s “I,” a feeling of “We” arose, a feeling of unity, unity with other members of the group. Our tribe - "We" - opposed other tribes, strangers ("They"), whose attitude was usually hostile. In addition to unity with “our own” and opposition to “strangers,” man keenly felt his connection with the natural world. Nature, on the one hand, was a necessary source of life's blessings, but, on the other hand, it was fraught with a lot of dangers and often turned out to be hostile to people. Attitudes towards fellow tribesmen, strangers and nature directly influenced ancient man’s understanding of his needs and possible ways to satisfy them. Behind all the needs of the people of the primitive era (as, indeed, of our contemporaries) were the biological characteristics of the human body. These features are expressed in the so-called urgent, or vital, primary needs - food, clothing, housing. The main feature of urgent needs is that they must be satisfied - otherwise the human body cannot exist at all. Secondary, non-essential needs are those without whose satisfaction life is possible, although it is full of hardships. Urgent needs had exceptional, dominant importance in primitive society. Firstly, meeting basic needs was a difficult task and required a lot of effort from our ancestors (unlike modern people, who easily use, for example, the products of a powerful food industry). Secondly, complex social needs were less developed than in our time, and therefore human behavior depended more on biological needs. At the same time, the entire modern structure of needs begins to form in primitive man, which is very different from the structure of animal needs. Main differences between humans and animals - labor activity and thinking developed in the Labor Process. To maintain his existence, man has learned to influence nature not only with his body (nails, teeth, as animals do), but with the help of special objects that stand between man and the object of labor and greatly enhance the human impact on nature. These items were called tools. Since a person supports his life with the help of the products of labor, labor activity itself becomes the most important need of society. Since labor is impossible without knowledge about the world, in a primitive society the need for knowledge arises. If the need for any objects (food, clothing, tools) is a material need, then the need for knowledge is already a spiritual need. In Primitive society, a complex interaction arises between individual (personal) and social needs. In the 18th century. French materialist philosophers (P.A. Golbach and others) proposed a theory of rational egoism to explain human behavior. Later it was borrowed by N. G. Chernyshevsky and described in detail in the novel “What is to be done?” According to the theory of rational egoism, a person always acts in his personal, egoistic interests, strives to satisfy only individual needs. However, if we analyze a person’s personal needs in detail and logically, we inevitably discover that, ultimately, they coincide with the needs of society (social group). Therefore, a “reasonable” egoist, pursuing only correctly understood personal gain, will automatically act in the interests of the entire human community. In our time, it has become clear that the theory of reasonable egoism simplifies the real state of affairs. Contradictions between the interests of the individual and the community (for primitive man this was his own tribe) actually exist and can reach enormous severity. Thus, in modern Russia we see many examples when certain needs of various people, organizations and society as a whole exclude each other and give rise to major conflicts of interest. But society has also developed a number of mechanisms to resolve such conflicts. The most ancient of these mechanisms arose already in the primitive era. This mechanism is morality. Ethnographers know tribes that even by the 19th-20th centuries. Art and any distinct religious ideas did not have time to emerge. But no, not a single tribe that does not have a developed and effectively operating system of moral standards. Morality arose among the most ancient people to harmonize the interests of the individual and society (their tribe). The main meaning of all moral norms, traditions, and regulations was one thing: they required a person to act primarily in the interests of the group, collective, to satisfy social needs first, and only then personal needs. Only such concern by everyone for the good of the entire tribe - even at the expense of personal interests - made this tribe viable. Morality was reinforced through education and tradition. It became the first powerful social regulator of human needs, managing the distribution of life's goods. Moral norms prescribed the distribution of material goods in accordance with established custom. Thus, all primitive tribes, without exception, have strict rules for the division of hunting spoils. It is not considered the property of the hunter, but is distributed among all fellow tribesmen (or at least among a large group of people). Charles Darwin during his voyage around the world on the Beagle in 1831-1836. I observed among the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego the simplest way of dividing the spoils: it was divided into equal parts and distributed to everyone present. For example, having received a piece of matter, the natives always divided it into equal pieces according to the number of people who were in this place at the time of division. At the same time, under extreme circumstances, primitive hunters could get the last pieces of food, so to speak, beyond their share, if the fate of the tribe depended on their endurance and ability to obtain food again. Punishments for actions dangerous to society also took into account the needs and interests of community members, as well as the degree of this danger. Thus, among a number of African tribes, those who steal household utensils do not suffer severe punishment, but those who steal weapons (items especially important for the survival of the tribe) are brutally killed. Thus, already at the level of the primitive system, society developed ways to satisfy social needs, which did not always coincide with the personal needs of each individual. Somewhat later than morality, mythology, religion and art appeared in primitive society. Their appearance is a major leap in the development of the need for cognition. The ancient history of any people known to us shows: a person is never satisfied only with satisfying primary, basic, essential needs. The greatest specialist in the theory of needs, Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), wrote: “The satisfaction of basic needs in itself does not create a system of values ​​on which one can rely and in which one can believe. We realized that possible consequences of satisfying basic needs could be boredom, lack of purpose, and moral decay. We seem to function best when we strive for something we lack, when we desire something we don’t have, and when we mobilize our energies to achieve that desire.” All this can already be said about primitive people. The existence of their general need for knowledge is easily explained by the need to navigate the natural environment, avoid danger, and make tools. What's truly surprising is something else. All primitive tribes had a need for a worldview, that is, to form a system of views on the world as a whole and man’s place in it. At first, the worldview existed in the form of mythology, that is, legends and tales that comprehended the structure of nature and society in a fantastic artistic and figurative form. Then religion arises - a system of views on the world that recognizes the existence of supernatural phenomena that violate the ordinary order of things (the laws of nature). In the most ancient types of religions - fetishism, totemism, magic and animism - the concept of God has not yet been formed. A particularly interesting and even daring type of religious performance was magic. This is an attempt to find the simplest and most effective ways to satisfy needs through contact with the supernatural world, active human intervention in current events with the help of powerful mysterious, fantastic forces. Only in the era of the emergence of modern science (XVI-XVIII centuries) did civilization finally make a choice in favor of scientific thinking. Magic and witchcraft were recognized as an erroneous, ineffective, dead-end path for the development of human activity. The emergence of aesthetic needs manifested itself in the emergence of artistic creativity and the creation of works of art. Rock paintings, figurines of people and animals, all kinds of jewelry, ritual hunting dances, it would seem, have nothing to do with satisfying basic needs and do not help a person survive in the fight against nature. But this is only at first glance. In reality, art is the result of the development of complex spiritual needs, indirectly related to material needs. This, first of all, is the need for a correct assessment of the surrounding world and the development of a reasonable strategy for the behavior of the human community. “Art,” notes the famous aesthetics specialist M. S. Kagan, “was born as a way of realizing the objectively developing system of values ​​in society, because the strengthening of social relations and their purposeful formation required the creation of objects in which to consolidate, store and This was the only spiritual information available to primitive people - information about socially organized connections with the world, about the social value of nature and the existence of man himself, which was passed on from person to person and from generation to generation.” Even in the simplest works of primitive art, the artist’s attitude to the depicted object is expressed, i.e., socially significant information is encrypted about what is important and valuable for a person, how one should relate to certain phenomena. So, in the development of the needs of primitive man, a number of patterns. Man has always been forced to satisfy urgent, primary, predominantly biological needs. Satisfaction of the simplest material needs led to the formation of increasingly complex, secondary needs, which were predominantly social in nature. These needs, in turn, stimulated the improvement of tools and the complication of work activity.3. Ancient people were convinced from experience of the need to satisfy social needs and began to create the necessary mechanisms for regulating social behavior - first of all, morality. Satisfaction of individual needs could be severely limited if they came into conflict with social needs.4. Along with the basic, urgent needs of all tribes of ancient people, at some stage of their development, there appears a need to form a worldview. Only ideological ideas (mythology, religion, art) could give meaning to human life, create a system of values, and develop a strategy for the life behavior of an individual and the tribe as a whole. The entire history of primitive society can be represented as a search for new ways to satisfy the developing system of material and spiritual needs. Already at this time, man tried to discover the meaning and purpose of his existence, which our distant ancestors did not reduce to the satisfaction of simple material needs. 4. The first civilizations and the “Axial Age” The economic basis of the first civilizations was the so-called early agricultural cultures: In the basins of large rivers in the warm zone of the Earth (Nile, Indus and Ganges, Yellow River and Yangtze, Tigris and Euphrates), settled settlements began to emerge about eight thousand years ago. Favorable natural conditions and the construction of irrigation systems contributed to the fact that for the first time in human history, the residents of these settlements began to receive a stable high yield of grain crops. Thus, they acquired a guaranteed source of protein food. More complete satisfaction of food needs occurred in parallel with another revolution in the world of needs. The transition from the nomadic lifestyle of pastoralists to a sedentary one, without which farming is impossible, caused an explosive growth in the world of things that surrounded man in everyday life. The Paleolithic hunter had an extremely meager set of items to satisfy his needs, since he had to carry all his property with him. With a sedentary lifestyle, there is an opportunity for almost unlimited creation and accumulation of things that satisfy increasingly refined needs. “The wealth of the material world of culture, which is already beginning to burden the human psychology of the 20th century, began a rapid escalation precisely in the era of the first farmers. One can easily imagine how cluttered with various objects the house of a sedentary farmer would have seemed to a Paleolithic hunter who had just left his cave dwelling.” At the same time, social differentiation intensified in early agricultural society, which meant differences in the ability to satisfy needs. Later, with the advent of social classes, this differentiation reaches enormous proportions: slaves and free peasants often find themselves on the brink of survival due to unsatisfaction of even simple essential needs, and slave owners and priests acquire the opportunity to satisfy them to the maximum extent. Satisfaction of needs increasingly depends not only on the production of material and spiritual goods, but also on a person’s place in the social system. Depending on their membership in a particular social group, people now have different opportunities to realize their needs. Moreover, in people from different social strata, during the process of upbringing, needs are formed somewhat differently. The centers of ancient civilizations usually include Sumer, Egypt, Harappa (India), Yin China, Crete-Mycenaean Greece and the ancient civilizations of America. The transition in these regions of the Earth to the era of civilization is associated with three major innovations: the emergence of writing, monumental architecture and cities. Such leaps in the development of material and spiritual culture led to the complication of the world of technology and household items (as a result of the development of handicraft production in cities), to the complication of economic relations and mechanisms for satisfying urgent needs. The farmer and the artisan now exchange the products of their labor, including through trade and the money circulation that was emerging in this era. The emergence of writing dramatically expanded the possibilities of indirect communication between people using sign systems (language). The needs for cognition, communication, learning, transmission and storage of information are now served through the creation of written texts. The next leap of such magnitude in serving the needs of cognition and information processing occurred, apparently, only in the 20th century, when computer technologies were developed and, in addition to written culture, screen culture began to form. A major shift in man’s understanding of the world, himself and his needs occurred independently of each other in the largest civilizations of China, India and the West in the period from 800 to 200. BC e. The famous German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers (1831-1969) called this period “Axial Time.” “Then the sharpest turn in history took place,” he wrote about the Axial Age. “A person of this type appeared that has survived to this day.” Previously, man was completely captivated by the traditional mythological and religious worldview. Now science, rational thinking based on proven experience, is beginning to take shape. It allows people to think about reality in a new way. An idea emerges of the individual as an independent person, and not a faceless piece of the human community. In ancient Greece and Rome, a society gradually formed, consisting of a diversity of individuals with different needs. In many Greek policies, a person receives the right to independently choose his occupation, develop and control his needs. However, complete independence of the individual is achieved later - only in the era of capitalism. Ancient civilizations continued to improve the system of norms that made it possible to coordinate the needs of society and the individual, and to prevent their conflict. If under the primitive system these were moral and then religious norms associated with them, then after the emergence of the state, human behavior is also regulated by legal norms. Legal norms are established by the state authorities, which monitor their implementation, using coercion if necessary. In the era of the first civilizations, the relationship between personal and social needs became more complex. The needs of various social groups, classes, and layers of the now heterogeneous population appeared. Dissatisfaction with the needs of a number of social groups - primarily the slave class - becomes a powerful stimulus for social conflicts. The development and satisfaction of human needs remains a contradictory process. Several trends were at work in it at the same time. On the one hand, the problems of food production, construction and maintenance of irrigation systems, ensuring security, and supplying the population with necessary things were solved. Production, preserved from the primitive era, was of a natural, non-commodity nature. Simple forms of exchange are now developing. The emergence of a class structure of society - the emergence of slaves, slave owners, artisans and free peasants - led to the formation of a significant layer of people, as we would now say, professionally engaged in service activities. The first large social stratum actually employed in the service sector was domestic servants (usually slaves). His main task was personal domestic service to the nobility and all wealthy segments of society. On the other hand, the economy of ancient civilizations was not limited to satisfying simple basic needs. An attempt to understand the world around us as a whole led, as already noted, to the formation of mythology, religion and art that satisfied the spiritual needs of man in understanding the world and his place in it. Mythology, art and religion became the first forms of worldview. In the era of early civilizations, ideological ideas about life and death, the afterlife, and the subsequent resurrection of the dead began to determine many areas of society's activities. Thus, there is a point of view that the main reason for the weakening of the civilization of Egypt during the period of the ancient kingdom (298-475 BC) was the construction of pyramids and giant temples, colossal structures that from a modern point of view have no practical significance. Nevertheless, society felt the need for such construction, since it corresponded to the worldview of the ancient Egyptians (and not to their immediate material interests). According to the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, all those who died in the distant future will be able to physically resurrect. However, only his pharaoh, the viceroy of the gods on earth, can resurrect any person. Therefore, every Egyptian deeply felt a personal connection with the pharaoh, and the preservation of his mummy and future resurrection were felt by the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt as an urgent personal need. This is a very special belief in the connection between the inhabitants of the country and the ruler, which created the need to take care of his burial. The ideology of the Ancient world could give rise to needs that seem strange and incomprehensible to modern people - like the need to build pyramids. Conclusion

The importance of the system of needs is that a person or society as a whole has a set of needs, each of which requires its own satisfaction. This seemingly simple thesis takes on a serious coloration if we analyze modern times and history. What we have achieved in any area, even at the cost of world wars, world crises, is ultimately the result of a simple desire or a feeling of lack, or shifts in internal chemistry. In parallel lies the law of increasing needs. This law is based on the needs of a particular person, and they characterize the needs of the entire society. And at the same time, this law is the driving force of economic growth, due to the fact that a person always needs more than he has achieved.

The dialectical relationship between the activities and needs of society is the root source of both their mutual development and all social progress; it is an absolute and eternal condition for the existence and development of society. That is, their relationship has the character of a general economic law. Human society, along with other laws, in its functioning and development is regulated by such an important law as the law of subordination of the entire system of activity to the system of needs of society, which requires the subordination of all the aggregate activities of society to the satisfaction of its socially necessary, objectively mature, real needs of society that arose in the course of the activity existence of society. Therefore, the absolute goal of the activity of a particular society is to satisfy its needs.

So, a person’s needs are imprints in his own consciousness of the felt need to ensure compliance with the comfortable and current conditions of his existence.

Bibliography

1. Dodonov B.I. Structure and dynamics of motives for activity. (V.psych., 2001, No. 4)

2. Magun B.C. Needs and psychology of social activity of the individual. L, 2003

3. Maslow A. Motivation and personality.-M., 1999

4. Dodonov B.I. Needs, attitudes and orientations of the individual (In Psych 2003, No. 5) -

5. Diligensky G, G. Problems of the theory of human needs (V.F 1999, No. 4)

6. Dzhidaryan I. A. Aesthetic need. M.. 2000.

Introduction

Need is defined as a state of a person created by the need for objects necessary for his existence and serving as a source of his activity. Man is born as a human individual, as a corporeal being, and in order to maintain life he has innate organic needs.

A need is always a need for something, objects or conditions necessary to maintain life. The correlation of need with its object transforms the state of need into a need, and its object into the object of this need and thereby generates activity, direction as the mental expression of this need.

A person's needs can be defined as a state of dissatisfaction or need that he seeks to overcome. It is this state of dissatisfaction that forces a person to take certain steps (carry out production activities).

Relevance this topic is one of the most important topics in this discipline. In order to work in the service sector, you need to know the basic methods of meeting customer needs.

Goal: is to study methods for meeting needs in the service sector.

Object of study: method.

Subject of study: methods of satisfying needs by the service sector

Tasks that need to be solved to achieve the goal:

1. Consider the concept and essence of human needs

2. Consider the concept of the service sector

3. Consider the basic methods of satisfying human needs by the field of activity.

To research this topic, I used different sources. Thanks to the book “Human Need” by M.P. Ershov, psychologist A. Maslow and philosopher Dostoevsky, I revealed the basic definitions of need. I learned the basic methods of satisfying needs from the textbook “Man and His Needs,” ed. Ogayanyan K. M. And to determine methods for a certain character, I was helped by the book “Fundamentals of General Psychology” Rubinstein S. L. And the educational manual by Kaverin S. V.

Human needs

The concept of need and their classification.

Needs are an unconscious stimulator of personality activity. It follows that need is a component of a person’s inner mental world, and as such exists before activity. It is a structural element of the subject of activity, but not the activity itself. This does not mean, however, that need is walled off from activity. As a stimulant, it is woven into the activity itself, stimulating it until a result is obtained.

Marx defined need as the ability to consume in a system of productive activity. He wrote: “As a need, consumption itself is an internal moment of productive activity, a moment of a process in which production is truly the starting point, and therefore also the dominant moment.”

The methodological significance of this thesis of Marx lies in overcoming the mechanical interpretation of the interaction of need and activity. As a residual element of naturalism in the theory of man, there is a mechanical concept, according to which an individual acts only when he is prompted to do so by needs; when there are no needs, the individual remains in an inactive state.

When needs are considered as the main cause of activity without taking into account the intervening factors located between the need and the result of the activity, without taking into account the level of development of society and a specific individual, a theoretical model of a human consumer is formed. The disadvantage of a naturalistic approach to determining human needs is that these needs are derived directly from natural human nature without taking into account the determining role of the specific historical type of social relations, which act as a mediating link between nature and human needs and transform these needs in accordance with the level of development of production, making them truly human needs.

A person relates to his needs through his relationship with other people and only then acts as a person when he goes beyond the limits of his inherent natural needs.

“Each individual, as a person, goes beyond the limits of his own special needs...”, wrote Marx, and only then do they “relate to each other as people...” when “the generic essence common to them is recognized by all.”

In M.P. Ershov’s book “Human Need” (1990), without any argumentation, it is stated that need is the root cause of life, a property of all living things. “I call a need a specific property of living matter,” writes P. M. Ershov, “that distinguishes it, living matter, from non-living matter.” There is a touch of teleologism here. You might think that cows graze in the meadow, overwhelmed by the need to give milk to children, and oats grow because they need to feed the horses.

Needs are a segment of a person’s inner world, an unconscious stimulator of activity. Therefore, need is not a structural element of an act of activity, it does not go beyond the somatic existence of a person, it refers to the characteristics of the mental world of the subject of activity.

Needs and desires are concepts of the same order, but not identical. Desires differ from needs by the lightness of their status in a person’s mental world. they do not always coincide in the need for sustainable functioning with the vitality of the organism and the human personality, and therefore belong to the sphere of illusory dreams. You can, for example, want to be forever young or to be absolutely free. But you cannot live in society and be free from society.

Hegel emphasized the irreducibility of interest to crude sensuality, to the natural nature of man. “A closer examination of history convinces us that the actions of men arise from their needs, their passions, their interests... and these alone play the main role.” Interest, according to Hegel, is something more than the content of intentions and goals; for him it is associated with the cunning of the world mind. Interest is related to needs indirectly through a goal.

Psychologist A. N. Leontyev wrote: “... in the very needy state of the subject, an object that is capable of satisfying the need is not rigidly written down. Before its first satisfaction, the need “does not know” its object; it must still be discovered. Only as a result of such detection does the need acquire its objectivity, and the perceived (imagined, conceivable) object acquires its motivating and activity-directing function, i.e. becomes a motive." Saint Theophan describes the motivating side of human behavior in this way: “The process of revealing this side of the soul is as follows. There are needs in the soul and body, to which everyday needs are grafted - family and social. These needs in themselves do not give a specific desire, but only force one to seek their satisfaction. When the satisfaction of a need in one way or another is given once, then after that, along with the awakening of the need, the desire for something with which the need has already been satisfied is born. Desire always has a specific object that satisfies the need. Another need was satisfied in various ways: therefore, with its awakening, different desires are born - now for this, now for a third object that can satisfy the need. In the unfolding life of a person, the needs behind the desires are not visible. Only these last ones swarm in the soul and demand satisfaction, as if for themselves.” Dzhidarian I. A. About the place of needs, emotions, feelings in the motivation of the individual. //Theoretical problems of personality psychology. /Ed. E. V. Shorokhova. - M.: Nauka, 1974. P.145-169. .

Need is one of the determinants of behavior, the state of a subject (organism, personality, social group, society), caused by the need he feels for something for his existence and development. Needs act as a motivator for the subject’s activity aimed at eliminating the discrepancy between necessity and reality.

Need as a need for something experienced by a person is a passive-active state: passive, since it expresses a person’s dependence on what he needs, and active, since it includes the desire to satisfy it and what he can satisfy her.

But it is one thing to experience a desire, and another to be aware of it. Depending on the degree of awareness, the desire is expressed in the form of attraction or desire. An unconscious need appears first in the form of an attraction. The attraction is unconscious and pointless. While a person only experiences an attraction, without knowing what object this attraction will satisfy, he does not know what he wants, there is no conscious goal in front of him to which he should direct his action. The subjective experience of need must become conscious and objective - attraction must turn into desire. As the object of need is realized and transformed into desire, a person understands what he wants. Objectification and awareness of the need, the transformation of drive into desire are the basis for a person to set a conscious goal and organize activities to achieve it. The goal is a conscious image of the anticipated result, towards the achievement of which a person’s desire is directed Leontyev A. N. Activity. Consciousness. Personality. - M.: MSU, 1975. - 28 p..

There is only one circumstance that gives rise to a “need” - this is the case when an adult refuses an event with a child, when he replaces himself, substitutes some object substitute in his place (therefore, the fundamental parental principle is not accidental: “no matter what the child amuses himself, only I wouldn't cry." The substitute is objective only in form; its content is always another person.

It is through this substitution, the alienation of an adult, that a specific functional organ is formed for the first time - a “need”, which subsequently begins to live its own “life”: it determines, demands, forces a person to carry out a certain activity or behavior. G. Hegel wrote that “... we rather serve our feelings, drives, passions, interests, and especially habits, than we possess them.” Rubinstein S. L. Fundamentals of general psychology. - M., 1990. - p. 51. In psychology, there are various classifications of human needs. The founder of humanistic psychology, A. Maslow, identifies five groups of human needs. The first group of needs is vital (biological) needs; their satisfaction is necessary to maintain human life. The second group is security needs. The third group is the need for love and recognition from other people. The fourth group is the needs of self-esteem and self-esteem. The fifth group is self-actualization needs.

The representative of the factorial concept of personality, J. Guilford, identifies the following types and levels of needs: 1) organic needs (for water, food, sexual motivation, general activity); 2) needs related to environmental conditions (comfort, pleasant surroundings); 3) work-related needs (general ambition, perseverance, etc.); 4) needs related to the individual’s position (the need for freedom); 5) social needs (need for other people). Often the proposed classifications of human needs are empirical and based on common sense. This is due to the lack of a substantiated theory of the origin of human needs. Below is a hypothesis of the nature of human needs, presented in the context of content-genetic logic.

Depending on the subject of needs: individual, group, collective, social needs. Depending on the object of needs: spiritual, mental, material needs. Detailed descriptions of these classes are possible.

One of such detailed classifications is the hierarchy of individual human needs by A. Maslow (Maslow, Abraham Harold, 1908-1970, psychologist and philosopher, USA) Heckhausen H. Motivation and activity. - M.: Pedagogy, 1986. P. 33-34.:

(a) physical needs (food, water, oxygen, etc.);

(b) the need to maintain its structure and function (physical and mental safety);

(c) needs for affection, love, communication; needs for self-expression, self-affirmation, recognition; cognitive and aesthetic needs, the need for self-realization.

Similarly, in accordance with the three-part structure of human essence (spiritual-mental-physical), all human needs (as well as any other subject of needs) can be represented in the form of three classes:

(1) the highest, determining the results of any human behavior, spiritual needs,

(2) subordinated to spiritual - mental needs,

(3) lower, subordinate to spiritual and mental - physical needs).

In the chain of elements that make up any of the parts (spiritual-mental-physical) of a person, needs occupy a central position: ideals - motives - needs - plans of behavior - programs of action Kaverin S.V. Psychology of needs: Educational and methodological manual, Tambov, 1996. - p. 71.

Examples of activity-related needs: the need for activity, cognition, as a result (in achieving a certain goal), for self-actualization, for joining a group, for success, for growth, etc.

Needs are the necessity, the need of a person in certain living conditions.

In the structure of the needs of a modern person, 3 main groups can be distinguished (Fig.): basic needs, needs for general living conditions, needs for activity.

Table 1

Classification of the needs of modern man

To restore and preserve his life, a person must first of all satisfy basic needs: the need for food, the need for clothing, shoes; housing needs.

The needs for general living conditions include: safety needs, needs for movement in space, health needs, educational needs, cultural needs.

Social services that satisfy and develop the needs of this group are created in sectors of social infrastructure (public order, public transport, healthcare, education, culture, etc.).

The active life (activity) of a person consists of work (labor), family and household activities and leisure. Accordingly, activity needs include the need for work, the need for family and household activities and the need for leisure.

Production creates goods and services - a means of satisfying and developing human needs and increasing their well-being. In production, while working, the person himself develops. Consumer goods and services directly satisfy the needs of an individual and family.

Human needs do not remain unchanged; they develop with the evolution of human civilization and this concerns, first of all, higher needs. Sometimes you come across the expression “a person with undeveloped needs.” Of course, this refers to the underdevelopment of higher needs, since the need for food and drink is inherent in nature itself. Refined cooking and serving most likely indicate the development of needs of a higher order, related to aesthetics, and not just to simple satiation of the stomach.

The definition of human nature as a set of basic human needs opens up new perspectives in its problematic analysis. And we don’t have to start from scratch - there are corresponding developments. Among them, the most fruitful is the concept of the famous American social psychologist, founder of the so-called humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow. His classification of basic human needs will form the basis for our further analysis of human nature.

Each of the basic general human needs considered by Maslow is a block or complex of less general, private human needs and demands, a kind of syndrome with a mass of specific symptoms - its external, individual manifestations.

The initial basic need of a person, according to Maslow, is the need for life itself, i.e. a set of physiological needs - food, breathing, clothing, housing, rest, etc. Satisfying these needs, or this basic need, strengthens and continues life , ensures the existence of the individual as a living organism, a biological being.

Social security is the next most important basic human need. She has a lot of symptoms. This includes concern for the guaranteed satisfaction of one’s physiological needs; here is an interest in the stability of living conditions, in the strength of existing social institutions, norms and ideals of society, as well as in the predictability of their changes; here is job security, confidence in the future, the desire to have a bank account, an insurance policy; there is also a lack of concern for personal safety; and much more. One of the manifestations of this need is also the desire to have a religion or philosophy that would “bring into the system” the world and determine our place in it Godefroy J. What is psychology.: In 2 volumes - Vol. 1. M.: Mir, 1992 , pp. 264.

The need for affection and belonging to a team is, according to Maslow, the third basic human need. Her manifestations are also very diverse. This includes love, sympathy, friendship, and other forms of human intimacy. This, further, is the need for simple human participation, the hope that your suffering, grief, misfortune will be shared, and also, of course, successes, joys, victories. The need for community-belonging is the flip side of a person’s openness or trust in being - both social and natural. An unmistakable indicator of dissatisfaction with this need is a feeling of loneliness, abandonment, and uselessness. Satisfying the need for affection and belonging is very important for a fulfilling human life. The lack of love and friendship affects a person just as painfully as, say, a lack of vitamin C.

The need for respect and self-esteem is another basic human need. A person needs that. so that he is valued, for example, for skill, competence, responsibility, etc., so that his merits, his uniqueness and irreplaceability are recognized. But recognition from others is not enough. It is important to respect yourself, to have self-esteem, to believe in your high purpose, that you are busy with necessary and useful work, and that you occupy a worthy place in life. Respect and self-esteem is also a concern for one’s reputation, one’s prestige. Feelings of weakness, disappointment, helplessness are the surest evidence of dissatisfaction with this human need.

Self-realization, self-expression through creativity is the last, final, according to Maslow, basic human need. However, it is final only according to classification criteria. In reality, the truly human, humanistically self-sufficient development of man begins with it. This refers to a person’s self-affirmation through the realization of all his abilities and talents. A person at this level strives to become everything that he can and, according to his internal, free motivation, should become. A person’s work on himself is the main mechanism for satisfying the need under consideration. Man and his needs. Tutorial. / Ed. Ohanyan K. M. St. Petersburg: Publishing house SPbTIS, 1997. - p. 70.

Why is Maslow's fivefold attractive? First of all, its consistency, and therefore its clarity and certainty. It is, however, not complete and not exhaustive. Suffice it to say that its author also identified other basic needs, in particular, knowledge and understanding, as well as beauty and aesthetic pleasure, but was never able to fit them into his system. Apparently, the number of basic human needs may be different, most likely much larger. In Maslow's classification, in addition, a certain logic is visible, namely subordination or hierarchical logic. The satisfaction of higher needs is a prerequisite for the satisfaction of lower needs, which is completely justified and understandable. Truly human activity actually begins only after the physiological, material needs of its bearer and subject are satisfied. What kind of dignity, respect and self-respect can we talk about when a person is poor, hungry and cold?

The concept of basic human needs, according to Maslow, does not impose any, except, perhaps, moral ones. restrictions on the variety of ways, forms and methods of their satisfaction, which is in good agreement with the absence of any fundamentally insurmountable barriers to the historical development of human society, with the diversity of cultures and civilizations. This concept, finally, organically links the individual and generic principles of man. The needs of lack or necessity, according to Maslow, are generic (i.e., affirmed by the very fact of belonging to the human race) qualities of a person, while the needs of growth are his individual, free-willed qualities of Berezhnaya N.M. Man and his needs / Ed. V.D. Didenko, SSU Service - Forum, 2001. - 160 pp..

Basic human needs are objectively correlated with universal human values, to which we are witnessing an increase in interest in the modern world. Universal human values ​​of goodness, freedom, equality, etc. can be considered as products or results of ideological specification of the substantive wealth of human nature - in its, of course, normative expression. The extremely general nature of human basic needs, their dispositionality and focus on the future explains such a high, ideal (from the word “ideal”) status of universal human values. Human nature is a kind of archetype of society and social development. Moreover, society here should be understood as all of humanity, the world community. The idea of ​​an interconnected, interdependent world thereby receives another anthropological confirmation - the unity of the basic needs of people, the unified nature of man Heckhausen H. Motivations and activities. - M.: Pedagogy, 1986. - p. 63.

The pluralism of needs is determined by the versatility of human nature, as well as the diversity of conditions (natural and social) in which they manifest themselves.

The difficulty and uncertainty of identifying stable groups of needs does not stop numerous researchers from looking for the most adequate classification of needs. But the motives and reasons with which different authors approach classification are completely different. Some reasons are from economists, others from psychologists, and still others from sociologists. The result is: each classification is original, but narrow-profile and unsuitable for general use. For example, the Polish psychologist K. Obukhovsky counted 120 classifications. There are as many classifications as there are authors. P. M. Ershov in his book “Human Needs” considers two classifications of needs to be the most successful: F. M. Dostoevsky and Hegel.

Without going into a discussion of the question of why Ershov finds similarities in two people who are completely distant from each other in terms of intellectual development and interests, let us briefly consider the content of these classifications as presented by P. M. Ershov.

Dostoevsky's classification:

1. Needs for material goods necessary to maintain life.

2. Cognition needs.

3. The needs of a worldwide unification of people.

Hegel has 4 groups: 1. Physical needs. 2. The needs of law, laws. 3. Religious needs. 4. Cognition needs.

The first group, according to Dostoevsky and Hegel, can be called vital needs; the third, according to Dostoevsky, and the second, according to Hegel, by social needs; the second, according to Dostoevsky, and the fourth, according to Hegel, are ideal.

The meaning of the word “need” can be guessed intuitively. It clearly comes from the verbs “to demand”, “to be required”. This word means some thing, phenomenon or quality of the surrounding world that a person needs in a given situation. More information about this concept, its diverse manifestations and meaning can be found in this article.

Expanding the concept

Need is the subjective need of an individual (or social group) to obtain one or another object of the surrounding reality, which is a prerequisite for maintaining normal and comfortable life.

In the human lexicon there are concepts that are similar in meaning - “need” and “request”. The first is usually used in a situation where a person is experiencing a shortage of something, the second relates to the field of marketing and is associated with the purchasing power of a person or group of people. In contrast to need and request, need is the need to receive both material and spiritual benefits. So it's a broader concept. It can include both needs and requests.

What are the needs?

There is a wide variety of forms of this phenomenon. For example, they distinguish material needs - those that are associated with obtaining certain resources (money, goods, services) necessary for an individual to maintain good health and mood.

Another large group is spiritual needs. This includes everything related to emotions, self-knowledge, development, self-realization, enlightenment, safety, etc. In other words, this is a person’s need to receive what was created by the consciousness of other people.

The third broad group consists of social needs - that is, those related to communication. This may be the need for friendship and love, attention, approval and acceptance by other people, finding like-minded people, the opportunity to speak out, etc.

Detailed classifications of needs are available in sociology, psychology and economics. Now we will look at one of the most popular.

Pyramid of needs

The hierarchy of needs created by American psychologist Abraham Maslow is widely known. This classification is interesting because it represents a seven-step pyramid. It clearly presents the basic needs of the individual and the role they play. Let us describe all these seven steps sequentially, from bottom to top.

7. At the base of Maslow’s pyramid are physiological needs: thirst, hunger, the need for warmth and shelter, sexual desire, etc.

6. Slightly higher is the need to obtain security: security, self-confidence, courage, etc.

5. The need to be loved, to love, to feel a sense of belonging to people and places.

4. The need for approval, respect, recognition, success. This and the previous stage already include social needs.

3. At a higher level of the pyramid there is a need to understand the world around us, as well as to acquire skills and abilities.

2. Almost at the top are aesthetic needs: comfort, harmony, beauty, cleanliness, order, etc.

1. Finally, the top of the pyramid represents the need for self-actualization, which includes knowing yourself, developing your abilities, finding your own path in life and achieving personal goals.

Good or bad

To satisfy a need means to perform a certain action, to receive something in one form or another. But can needs be bad? By themselves, no. However, in some cases, people choose unhealthy ways of gratification. For example, smoking with friends (colleagues, classmates) as a ritual of unification helps satisfy the need for friendship, respect, etc., but is harmful to physical health. How to avoid this? You just need to find replacement options that will satisfy the need, but are not bad habits and self-destructive actions.

There is also an opinion that material needs are something bad, and their satisfaction inhibits a person’s spiritual development. But in reality, a variety of physical goods (consumer goods, educational aids, transportation, communications) make it possible to obtain food, comfort, training, recreation, communication and other components of a harmonious life. A person first satisfies simpler and more pressing needs, and then moves on to complex ones related to creativity, spiritual growth and self-improvement.

What to do with the need

Life without satisfaction of spiritual and social needs is difficult, but possible. Another thing is physical needs or, in other words, needs. It is impossible to do without them, since they are responsible for maintaining the life of the body. Higher needs are a little easier to ignore than basic needs. But if you completely ignore the individual’s desire to be loved, respected, successful, developed, this will lead to an imbalance in the psychological state.

Satisfaction of human needs begins at the lowest level of the pyramid (physiological needs) and then gradually moves upward. In other words, it is impossible to satisfy the highest (social or spiritual) needs of the individual until the simplest, basic ones are satisfied.

Conclusion

Need is what makes both an individual and society as a whole move and develop. The need for something pushes us to look for or invent ways to get what we want. It can definitely be said that without needs, human development and the progress of society would be impossible.