by, and responsive to, environmental, or societal activities, is important and instructive in analyzing the problems Elshtain notes are permeating society today. It considers both the needs and desires of individuals, and how they effect developments in society, as well as governmental activity within society (the environment), thereby addressing contemporary developments, both positive and negative, as well as possible solutions to negative developments that now ferment in the United States. Seen in this perspective, an individuals’ behavior, political or otherwise, is dependent upon the fulfillment of individual needs, of which their environment may stifle or help them fulfill these needs. Presuming that Artistotle is correct in defining human beings as political lifeforms, and that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are defining characteristics of individuals within political societies, the individual/environmental synthesis should transcend empirical boundedness, offering important illumination of today’s 21st century difficulties as outlined and expressed by Elshtain and others. The first part of this section will review the underlying assumptions of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the application of these needs to political behavior. The second part of this section will focus on specific “troubles”, addressed in Elshtain’s review of American society at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, in consideration of innate individual needs, expressed through Maslow’s hierarchy, and an individual’s reactions to environmental stimuli that either enhance or stifle the fulfillment of those needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs “Maslow had a vision of a world in which synergy is not a zero-sum game but a way of interacting with the world, such that the social, political, and cultural world becomes enhanced simultaneously with the enhancement of the individual....
