Transcend
"A bold reimagining of Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs--and new insights for realizing your full potential and living your most creative, fulfilled, and connected life. When psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman first discovered Maslow's unfinished theory of transcendence, sprinkled throughout a cache of unpublished journals, lectures, and essays, he felt a deep resonance with his own work and life. In this groundbreaking book, Kaufman picks up where Maslow left off, unraveling the mysteries of his unfinished theory, and integrating these ideas with the latest research on attachment, connection, creativity, love, purpose and other building blocks of a life well lived. Kaufman's new hierarchy of needs provides a roadmap for finding purpose and fulfillment--not by striving for money, success, or "happiness," but by becoming the best version of ourselves, or what Maslow called self-actualization. While self-actualization is often thought of as a purely individual pursuit, Maslow believed that the full realization of potential requires a merging between self and the world. We don't have to choose either self-development or self-sacrifice, but at the highest level of human potential we show a deep integration of both. Transcend reveals this level of human potential that connects us not only to our highest creative potential, but also to one another.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
2people
2022–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Many good observations here. I had time to read 50% through.
>> I think I’m particularly suspicious of community, because as a writer and pedantic arsehole on the internet, I value truth-seeking behaviour. I want people to think and say things that are true, not just things that they have to believe for the sake of keeping their community happy.
Unfortunately, this is what happens with every group of people.
Our individual realities are highly subjective. A group of people who are part of a community construct a shared reality that they can all accept. If you don’t contribute to the shared reality, you are treated as someone who is problematic.
As humans we are social creatures. In our evolution, we develop cognitive systems that help us thrive in social structures. One system is called the social protection system. This system gets activated when we sense tension in relationships and sends a signal of fear to the subject that they risk being separated from a social group. This fear motivates people to maintain connection. So some people are intrinsically motivated by fear to maintain their status, sometimes unconsciously.
Our self esteem comes from two things, relationships and mastery. Healthy self esteem comes from connection to people who accept you for who you are, where you feel visible and accepted with your good and bad traits.
If you have a few people in your life with this type of connection, you will have a healthy social foundation and rely less on belonging to a group.
Groups are valuable in that the human experience is complicated. The best source of information comes directly from other humans and their experiences overcoming complexity.
However, I do agree with the author where certain groups can be problematic, particularly engaging in things like tribalism.
Establishing good self esteem by keeping a few people close to you who see you and accept you as a flawed human is key. The other part is to immerse yourself in activities where you develop mastery and maintain a connection to the activities that are intrinsically motivating and satisfying without distraction from external signals.
I learned this by studying the science of self actualization, from the research done by Scott Barry Kaufman and his book Transcend. He’s a humanistic psychologist who was inspired by Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology.
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs to start, but to extend on more modern meaning, your psychological needs are quite important given most people have their basic needs met. There's a popular self-determination theory to explain this further.
i.e. Autonomy, competence, relatedness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory
One of the better books on this topic is "Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization" by Scott Barry Kaufman
Here's a piece I wrote based on that book:
Think of your life as a sailboat.
The hull protects us from the waves and keeps us safe.
The sail allows us to explore and adapt to our environment.
However, to get anywhere, we must open our sail to the world. Without that, we're stuck in harbor.
As we set out in the world in the many different directions we each may take in life. We are all sailing into the unknown of the sea together.
So while a ship in harbor is safe, that's not what ships are built for.
Even though you're alone in your boat, it's nice to see other lights along the way.
- Here's a list of books I found helpful when reflecting upon my recent burnout. Very similar thoughts around lack of purpose, lack of direction at work, common disruptions at work leading to not being able to work deeply. And much more.
Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization by Scott Barry Kaufman
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson
Inspired / Empowered by Marty Cagan
Build What Matters by Ben Foster
High Output Management by Andy Grove
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Much by Cal Newport (Deep Work / A World Without Email / etc)
