Safety, Significance, Connection

I was lucky to watch an early screening of Channel 5's Andrew Callaghan's latest 2024 documentary Dear Kelly. They follow an extreme character who follows far right conspiracy theories. We often see conspiracy theorists posting seemingly ridiculous things online and protesting with signs, but what is the background of a person led into these ideas? The documentary proposes a thesis based on trauma and human needs.

When a person faces a critical trauma that shakes the foundation of safety, significance, and connection they become highly susceptible to strong ideologies.

In Andrew's journalistic interviews from young people falling into gangs to flat-earthers he's often hypothesized there is a central unprocessed trauma before being consumed with an ideological framework.

I have to say I've thought a lot about this view of human needs. It so nicely compresses basic human needs into three pillars.

But I can't find these needs backed by any psychological theory!

At least not so succinctly, yet they appear so obviously true. They cover many of the bases of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging and love", "social needs" or "esteem", "self-actualization" and "transcendence" to describe the pattern through which human needs and motivations generally move. Wikipedia

I love simplicity. I can't get over how much the three needs connect and overlap with what Maslow listed.

• Safety involves physiological, mental, and emotional needs
• Significance involves social belonging and self-actualization, the power to interact with the world, attain useful levels of skills that are effective, and make a difference in peoples' lives
• Connection involves intimacy, love, community, and even transcendence. Through connecting to something larger than ourselves we transcend

I like this short list of fulfillment. With it you can quickly assess the wellbeing of an indvidiual. I've written about human flourishing before, but I think Maslow needs to step aside compared to the work of Manfred Max Neef et al. Max Neef listed 9 core human needs for humans and society (along with a 10th of transcendence).

• Subsistence
• Protection
• Affection
• Understanding
• Participation
• Leisure
• Creativity
• Identity
• Freedom

While the three needs cover quite a bit:

• Safety: subsistence, protection
• Significance: participation, understanding, creativity, freedom
• Connection: affection, identity, leisure

We need to do a bit of "unpacking" of the three needs to account for the range of human experience. Of course when you are deeply trying to meet human needs it's worth differentiating the nuances of our drives.

Conspiracy Theories

The number one service conspiracy theories provide is a powerful distraction. After major trauma there is often dissociation, a disconnect from the events that rocked our needs. Reflecting back on what happened can be overwhelming, so in its place is an obsessive and all encompassing dive into a conspiracy theory.

I suspect people fall into the ideologies which most fulfill the main need they desire most. By learning outside of the mainstream you can feel better off, safer, than the average person. Often there is a great sense of significance as you are in the select few. Many of these conspiracy theories also provide a community of like-minded people.

Ultimately these people aren't so strange. They're just trying to meet their fundamental human needs.