activities related to the group. The most basic group, the family, is a direct extension of the human physiological systems. Indeed, within the table we characterize the family according to the characteristics of the individual. An adult must find food and water and must provide this to the infant and the young until such time as they can do it on their own. In situations where it doesn’t happen, the young die. When we consider the establishment and operation of groups beyond the family, new phylogenetically derived facilities come into play. For example, in the course of the older meeting the physiological needs of the younger, the methods of their provisioning are behaviors that are learned by the young. Hence the reference to habit as the initial grouping mechanism aimed at meeting the most basic of needs. At this level, the necessary behaviors are learned by observation and repetition; they don’t necessarily require language, formal training or any other higher-level facilities of the individual human. Moreover, the dispersion of behaviors through habitual response allows mechanisms to be distributed to larger and larger groups.

With increased cognitive facilities, people developed the ability to plan ahead to meet basic physiological needs; to assuage the appetites by proactive design rather than reactive response. Animals could be domesticated and thus available on demand, rather than having to resort to the vagaries of the hunt. Such an approach melds well with efforts to meet the physiological needs of a multitude. Consider, for example, the story from the Christian Bible of Joseph, who became second only to Egypt’s Pharaoh in order to marshal the surplus food during seven years of plentiful harvest and thus be able to provide food for the people during the following seven years of famine. Certainly a religious story, but with a well-defined policy punch line centered on proactive design.

In the story, the conveyance of this policy came to Joseph through Pharaoh’s dream; that is, through trust derived from an altered state of consciousness. As an individual person grows and matures, there is a constant learning process that associates emotion and cognition derived response to stimulus input. This response, if evoked simultaneously in multiple individuals, forms a powerful grouping mechanism. In the individual, positive emotions, culminating in ecstasy, form a powerful driver for independent action. Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy is a pioneering work showing the universality of ecstasy in human dispersion. In the group, a directed emotional response for effecting policy is similarly necessary for early humans to attack a giant, wooly mammoth in order to feed the clan. How they are impelled to overcome their fear is a subject for discussion a bit later.

The continued evolutionary development of the individual, enabling the establishment of larger and more effective groups, has brought humans to a position of eminence relative to the satisfaction of their physiological needs. Building upon the previously mentioned facilities, modern individuals, perhaps alone, perhaps through a group, can realize considerable, if not complete, control over the satisfaction of their physiological needs. Correspondingly, current social ecosystems are able to exert considerable, if not complete control, over the physical ecosystem in order to provide for the physiological needs of the multitudes in the group.

Security and safety comprise the next level of the needs hierarchy. For the individual and family, the most basic characterization of attention to and provision for safety is the tool. Individual persons are extremely ill suited to survive in the wilderness without some means of enhancing their physical characteristics. This enhancement is accomplished through the preparation and use of tools; implements which can augment the strength and stature deficiencies that humans suffer, for example when compared to the major predators that they face or to the extreme conditions offered by the physical ecosystem.

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