Human Needs and Tendencies 6 - Above Instincts

           Human needs are those things required for survival in order to live as a human being and not as an animal. Human tendencies are activated by our needs in order to fulfill these human needs. These tendencies are traits which only human beings possess in order to achieve our higher calling as stewards of the earth and heirs of the kingdom of God.

            While animals are guided solely by their instincts, humans have a highly motivated innate power to adapt to their environment and cause their environment to adapt to themselves. The human has a much more complex nervous system, a larger brain, the ability to stand upright thereby freeing the hands, as well as the opposing thumb. The entire first plane of development, from conception to age six, is spent adapting oneself to one’s own society and culture, through the development of consciousness, reason, will power, imagination, and conscience.

            These human needs, which are essential to life itself, and tendencies, which are ordered to the fulfillment of needs, act as creative possibilities – as urges or actual inclinations to move or to act to satisfy basic human needs, both physical and spiritual. From conception to age six, the child’s mission is to construct himself into such a being that he belongs within his social group, making the environment around him part of himself. Beyond age six, the child is ready to  enter the world as the human tendencies direct him to expand his energies.