Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs And Civilization In Lord Of The Flies
The boys in Lord Of The Flies lack civilization greatly, as they don't have the basic needs for living, and have poor ethics. What is needed for civilization is many things, such as without rules and everyone playing there part civilization cannot be there. At the beginning of Lord Of The Flies, civilization was there but as the story continues civilization starts to collapse and deplete throughout the boys. As the story continues the begin to break the rules that they had set before, and the rules that the boys had been following started to fall apart. Some of the boys were not doing there share and doing other unimportant things. For example, more and more of the boys are becoming ruthless and savages as the story are continuing. The reason why the boys did a poor job of creating civilization is that they have poor ethics/morals and don't meet the basic needs of living. They don't meet the basic needs of living, which refers to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs in order for motivation to occur at the next level, each level must be satisfied within the individual themselves. The problem in Lord Of The Flies is that they are lacking there physiological needs (Food, Water, Warmth, Rest). Therefore civilization is lacking as they don't meet the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They haven't fulfilled the basics in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Many of the concerns and problems in lord of the flies are caused because of the lack of civilization. Some of the boys on the island may have been good people but as time is going by, and the situation they were being put in they ended up in a savage like state for their community. Since they didn’t create good habits or rules for their “civilization”, they ended up with detrimental effects. For example, the main problem that happened in chapter 2 was the extinguishing of the signal fire. The problem is that some of the boys would rather satisfy there individual desires than cooperate with a cogent society, which would require that each boy act for the benefit of the whole group. We can clearly see that Ralph and jack are very different as each one inherits its own attributes. Jack has many disagreements and issues while Ralph has very few. We can see this as Jack wants to “have fun” while Ralph wants to “secure the group's rescue”. Jack is having fun as he wants to kill pigs and acts in savagery like way. He wants to satisfy his desire of killing, while Ralph is working vigorously and continuously to get themselves rescued. We can clearly see that ralph’s perception that he has for the group is reasonable, but the problem is that it requires work and sacrifice from every one one of the boys, which the boys aren't providing. Because of this they many of the boys try to evade their societal duties in favor of being self-centered and achieving there own benefits and happiness. The signal fire is extinguished when jack’s hunter’s fail to attend to it. Jack and his group are focusing on things that are not needed at the moment. If Jack’s group attended the fire properly they may have been rescued, when the passing ship nearby would have seen it. Not just that but jack’s way of acting and thinking is wrong.
When Jack complains to Ralph about him leaving the fire unattended and it going off, jack just gulps it in. But when piggy does the same thing he pushes piggy aggressively which leads to his broken glasses and him getting hurt. We can clearly see jack is creating a sense of hierarchy because he doesn't value what piggy is saying. He believes whatever he is doing is right and doesn't believe that everyone is equal to each other. This is how jack creates a sense of hierarchy and inequality throughout the boys. We can see another example of this in the lack of shelters in lord of the flies. When Jack has gone pig hunting, he returns without a kill. He leaves the jungle and fines ralph and Simon working on building a shelter. All the boys had agreed on building the shelters but they all dispersed. Simon is the only one that puts his personal time and effort into it. All the other boys are off playing, bathing, or hunting with Jack, even though Jack and his hunters have failed so far to produce meat. Ralph explains the force majeure to build shelters, while Jack thinks that he and the other boys need meat and tries to explain his need to hunt. We can see that many of the boys joined Jack's tribe, a group without sensible values whose group foresees that jack will offer them total freedom. This is how society building isn't met. As I said before that we need proper ethics and basic needs of living in order to create civilization. If everyone is going to wander off into jack’s uncivilized group with no values, ethics or proper behavior civilization cannot be met. Everyone must do they share in order to create it. It cannot just be Ralph and Simon working on building a shelter. Everyone must cooperate and oblige into helping. The difficult problem which we need to solve in order for proper society building is that many people in the group like “jack” must do sacrificing. Some of the individuals must give up to gain benefits of being in the group.
In conclusion, they are doing a terrible job in building civilization, because they lack basic needs, and carry poor morals. Therefore, society building isn't met and they will have to do much more in order to achieve it. By the way, the boys are progressing on there daily lives they will never be able to achieve a sustainable way of living. In conclusion, hard work and time are needed for everyone whether they like it or not. It cannot be possible for only a few members to put on the weight for every single person. If this is achieved by every single person, society building and civilization will be there and will prosper and flourish.
