The 6 pillars of the good system help you reach your full potential

Building a vision of our good system, we need to know what are the needs and wants of the system. What do we want to achieve? What are the pillars of the good system?

To pin it down, the system shall make it so, that everybody can reach his full potential, that society lives in peace and harmony with itself and the planet. To provide the best life for all humans. Those who live right now and all future generations.

The needs of humans

What does a human need to reach his full potential? What does the system need to provide to allow people to reach their full potential? We can use Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs to find out the first.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a social psychological model by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908–1970). It describes human needs and motivations (in a hierarchical structure) simplistically and attempts to explain them.

Physiological needs

The basic needs are food, water, air, shelter, reproduction, heat, clothes, etc. which Maslow calls physiological needs.

Safety needs

Above that are, according to the psychologist, safety needs. This includes health, personal security, emotional security and financial security.

Love and social needs

The third level is love and social needs. It’s the essential of belonging to a group. Like family, friends or bigger groups like the local community or a religious group. It’s about acceptance, respect, and trust.

Esteem needs

Esteem needs are the fourth level in Maslow’s hierarchy. To quote Wikipedia

Esteem comes from day-to-day experiences[sic] which provide a learning opportunity that allows us to discover ourselves.

With other words, education and providing the opportunity to develop your potential.

Cognitive needs

Following directly are cognitive needs, like curiosity, creativity, foresight, and meaning. Maslow wanted humans to have intrinsic motivation to become educated people.

Aesthetic needs

Above that are aesthetic needs. The more basic needs are met, now let’s make it beautiful.

Self-actualization

The second-highest level is self-actualization. Here, a human being has reached his full potential.

Transcendence needs

On top are transcendence needs, which are spiritual needs. In his later years, Maslow added this top level. He thinks someone finds the fullest realization in giving oneself to something beyond oneself—for example, in altruism or spirituality.

This is only a brief summary of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Take a look at the video for a better explanation.

How the pillars of the good system lets you reach your full potential

How can we create a good system that lets everyone reach their full potential or at least gives everyone, including you, the chance to reach it?

Disclaimer: this post gives only an overview of how the system can do that. So we can develop a vision of it. But the picture is like a puzzle. We have to put it together piece by piece. There are big pieces and smaller pieces. In our case, the puzzle may never be finished because everything changes in the flow of time. But, we put in the bigger pieces first, so we can see the picture already and refine it with the smaller ones.

This post is about the bigger pieces or the pillars of the good system. There can’t be a clear hierarchy like in Maslow’s system because everything ins intertwined, and his system describes the needs of one human. We want a global system for everyone.

Education

For the experienced reader, it may come as no surprise that, in my opinion, education is the most important pillar of the good system.

On first sight, it may not be necessary for the basic needs. But to have clean air and water and agriculture to provide food, you require knowledge and science. Even more so for clothes and shelter and all things that need to be made. And finally, for reproduction. Not only should everyone know how women get pregnant, but also how to prevent it.

Knowledge makes you feel safe. If you know why something is, you are less afraid of it. Furthermore, you need to learn to be actual safe. Otherwise, you may use the hairdryer in the bathtub.

Education can also help you find peers. People who have the same interests and skills.

Maslow’s esteem and cognitive needs are already directly linked to education. You need to know how to make something beautiful or even to find out what is beautiful to meet the aesthetic needs.

Education can help you to develop your full potential and to find ways to transcendence.

Economy

To know how to make food is one thing, but to feed people, we have to do and make something. We require an economy for our system to work.

The economy is the knowledge brought to action.

The most important work is no different from today. It’s in education, infrastructure, social care, health care, agriculture, etc. Different from today’s economy, these jobs are the highest-paid ones.

Since I don’t believe in the free market, there needs to be rules. These rules are made by the people, as I will describe in the third pillar, politics.

Although the economy is an essential pillar, there’s not much more to say.

Politics

How do we want to distribute all the necessary goods? What should education look like? How can we make people safe? How can we support the weak and those in need?

These and more are questions the politics have to solve. Politics provides a framework and sets of rules to help each one to reach his full potential and to create a safe and prosperous society.

The best political system to provide this is democracy. Participation in the system helps the people to reach the levels of social, esteem, cognitive and aesthetic needs.

In our system are two levels of political decision-making. On the global level, worldwide rules and laws are made. Otherwise, on the local level, these rules, and laws are transferred into the everyday life of the people and are adapted to the needs of people in a certain area.

While you can participate on the local level via voting and directly participating, the global levels work more with draws and is more technocratic.

To be sure that everyone plays by the rules, we require the fourth pillar. Justice

Justice

A good system can only work when everybody plays by the rules. To ensure that we require people to overlook the rules and if necessary punishes the ones, who cheat.

Naturally, the justice pillar serves the safety needs the most, but it is equally important to the other levels of needs. The physiological needs must be provided fairly to everyone. If there is a dispute in a relationship or a group it has to be settled and if learning opportunities are not provided equally and need to have the chance to address this.

The justice system needs to be independent of politics, and it has to be transparent. It also has to be equally accessible for everyone. Regardless of how much money you have.

Which triggers the next pillar. Finance.

Finance

Somehow the system has to be financed. People had some kind of barter trading since ancient times. So it will be necessary to have a financial system.

The most critical topic the finance pillar regulates is money. For example, there will be only one currency worldwide.

The basic needs shall be possible to be met without the need to work. Society shall provide food, water, housing, clothes, health care, education and so on for everyone, regardless of the income.

The urge to work shall be mostly intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation would be to have special food, special clothes or any vanity goods. The best way to be able to afford this, is to work in one of the highest paying jobs. Which ware, like I described above, the most important jobs in the system.

Media, Arts & Culture

The media has the very significant function to ensure that politics are transparent and that the people are informed. It needs to be independent of politics and wealth, and it needs to be transparent itself.

Arts & Culture are essential to giving the people the chance to express themselves. One critical feature to reach your full potential. Furthermore, it is needed to create beauty and aesthetics.

Maybe the most important part of Arts & Culture is to create visions that forces society to rethink and develop the system further.

Conclusion

These are the pillars of our good system.

I didn’t include topics like infrastructure, health care or safety because it’s all part of pillars, mostly politics.

The pillars of the good system are not that different from our current system, at least in the western world. But the priorities are set entirely different. The rules and the execution are also not the same. To develop and define them is the task for this blog.

The pillars of the good system are the foundation to build on. I think it was important to specify them. As orientation for me and for you. We now have the biggest pieces of the puzzle, with smaller ones to come, we will get an always improving picture.

Ian DeBay

My name is Ian DeBay.

I am the founder of iandebay.com. I am a content creator, blogger, podcast, YouTuber. This is my blog where I talk about system change, sustainability and other fun stuff.