Self-Actualization

The concept of actualization refers to a thing defined as having a dynamic where it obtains a certain degree of completeness. What is defined as completeness for a thing relates to the parameters the thing, itself, is being defined with.

Concerning self-actualization, others may define it differently, and perhaps with good reason, and they may speak of differing types based on differing definitions of self. Here the definition is oriented towards all people, even though the state of actualization for any given person would widely differ.

Self-actualization is one's obtainment of the full expression of his genes. More encompassing and significant goals may be considered more important, even far more important, but the effects of one's life don't relate to self-actualization as defined here.

For humans self-actualization relies greatly on intellectual and emotional growth. Compare this to a simple animal like a reptile who has essentially actualized simply by being in a position to breed.


To understand the self-actualization of men consider how the male breeding role doesn't generally necessitate every male survive to breed. Concerning the normal dynamic in ancient days, a tribe's reliance on large numbers of men was based significantly on their value in war and obtainment of resources, with artistry and leadership being part. But those men didn't normally die fighting directly for the right to breed, they died in the pursuits of their own and their tribe's interests, pursuits which would, in part, better qualify them to breed.

Having such pressures from their tribe and environment the men of most peoples through most of the species' past have rarely put much thought into obtaining their fullest level of actualization. That would come to relatively few without necessarily much planning in that regard, with both their strengths and chance being a part of their success.

In modern sheltering societies the dynamic has changed for most. Men rarely have what qualifies as a tribe and rarely find they're compelled by their family and society to take such great risks. As all, or most, lineages of people evolved so that the obtainment of one's actualization required great risk, to obtain actualization in modern days often requires one to seek risks or simply rid oneself of many common precautions.

Often the greatest risk is certain forms of insanity, which in themselves are something few would value and which can lead to death or lead to one acting contrary to his prior values.

So before seeking a high degree of self-actualization men must first decide how much they're willing to risk, not just to themselves, but to those people and things they value.

Most who seek self-actualization will fail. Even though those who fail in modern days won't as often provide such great service to their kind as in ancient days, one can still honor those of his kind that shorten the duration and lessen the quality of their lives by seeking and failing to actualize. Though, concerning oneself, it's questionable if one should ever focus on the thought of himself as one who should be honored in such a way. If one sees himself as failing one should consider if he over-estimated how high the ceiling of his actualization would be.

A man may value the pursuit of actualization, and also value his kind and so value actions that would enhance them, understanding that often the two go together, but that the time may come to choose between them. One may also consider what he'd perceive as an oppositional form of being. In a sense, if actualization is consider a progression from the ground state of genes, then an oppositional form of being would be a regression from it.


Concerning the self-actualization of women I'm not as clear. Consider their breeding role, where most are needed and able to breed, and how that role relates to the broader feminine persona which is, obviously, more prevalent in women than men. One might conclude that a larger degree of women throughout the species' past have had been able to actualize to their specific genes than men. While this is likely true, and while it's likely true more women have survived to live long lives than men, it doesn't mean that actualization for a woman is anywhere close to easy.

Concerning outside threats and the elements, women have always been more sheltered relative to men, so my guess is that women have always had a plight similar to what, for men, is more specific to modern day environments. Now, and in the past, as a woman pursued actualization she likely risked specific forms of insanity, or what might be less a form of insanity and more a form of perpetual misery. It seems a woman is more able to suffer continually without either succumbing to insanity or finding a way to regain a relative peace of mind.

Is 'actualization', the way you define it, another way of saying that one attains the highest degree of probabilities as these have been inherited?
A greater degree of options available does not always mean one can access them all.
I've defined this as 'power' or 'strength', dependent on awareness which only exposes options others are not aware of.
Ones genes are not entirely positive.
Genes are stored memories, accumulated and passed on, as code.
Some memories can be self-destructive - some combinations can be self-handicapping.

The full expression of primal masculine genetics - body - would be to mate with as many females as possible - denying them to other males.
The mind learns to self-limit so as to gain access to other probabilities it could not access on its own.

The objective gives value to the action - even the act of withholding an action.

I do not believe in completeness. This indicates an end - telos.
Existence is dynamic - falling away - so it denies an end, or a completeness.
Perhaps a better word would be honesty or being true to oneself - a reference to the memories of DNA.
To be honest with yourself is to know thyself, and to know thyself is to know both the positives and the negatives about yourself, as this relates to other.
a difficult task, not only because of ego but because of the dynamic nature of existence and of the self.
Self is a continuity forever adding, growing. A task that is never ending.

Civilized man - the cultivated man (See Hannibal Lecter as Harrison's version of the cultured/cultivated man in post-modern hypocrisy), implies a man who has trained himself to allow some genetic impulses to express themselves more than others - entirely repressing or sublimating others, in accordance with an lucid ideal.
All this without rejecting or denying the rest - self-deceit, Abrahamic and Buddhist asceticism (nihilism) - but fully and honestly appreciating it all.
Part of this is identifying not only as an individual but as a member of a tribe and race - gene/meme where genes takes precedence over memes - body before mind and its ideologies; mind disciplined to the body's primitive wisdom - its genetic memories known and unknown, conscious and subconscious.

What this means is that he mind is the body's 'emissary' as McGilchrist would put it, not its master enslaving the body to an ideology.

Actualization would be to bring to bear as much of your aggregate energies and their known and yet unknown potentials as possible, achieving the highest form of your probabilities in relation to an objective.
The objective has to be real - attainable - and not unreal or supernatural.

Self-actualization is a connotation of destiny. Knowing oneself demands knowing where one is adapted in the hierarchy. Knowing strengths and weaknesses; mostly weaknesses in order to accentuate strengths.

The ideal of oneself is only a drive, a mover towards power, however great it can be. The strength of awareness, as Satyr points out, determines how much of one’s potential is actualized, based on how much of oneself is ascertained into self-knowledge; a tempering process before one’s capabilities are tested seriously. Most will reach some degree of their potential, but with little to no understanding of how it came to be. The awareness of it, increases the chances for greater self-worth and power.

Knowthyself must be an organic process.

All lifeforms' aggregate genes require much from their environment to actualize. The simplest of animals might require little more than air, water and the right food, while humans require much more. For example, they require particular geographical environments and culture. The culture they require for the fullest self-actualization is a culture that evolved along side the evolution of their genes. Life among a foreign culture still may allow much self-actualization, but is limited. That's because the culture that evolved along side their genes has been continually allowing for the reselection of similar genes.

One born into a relatively foreign culture can hardly expect to obtain the degree actualization as one born into his most specific kind's culture, but he can attempt to regain it to an extent.

Satyr wrote:

Is 'actualization', the way you define it, another way of saying that one attains the highest degree of probabilities as these have been inherited?

When I say actualization is the full expression of genes I mean that the potential states the genes were selected for have been met. So any possible expression of one's inheritance outside that wouldn't qualify as actualization, as I define it.

Quote :

A greater degree of options available does not always mean one can access them all.
I've defined this as 'power' or 'strength', dependent on awareness which only exposes options others are not aware of.
Ones genes are not entirely positive.
Genes are stored memories, accumulated and passed on, as code.
Some memories can be self-destructive - some combinations can be self-handicapping.

While one may find himself subverting or suppressing those genes without a known purpose, because one intuitively understands the gene's problems, it seems one would first want to have a good understanding of what the actualization of his genes would be without any subversion or suppression.

Quote :

Actualization would be to bring to bear as much of your aggregate energies and their known and yet unknown potentials as possible, achieving the highest form of your probabilities in relation to an objective.
The objective has to be real - attainable - and not unreal or supernatural.

It seems one would need a base before one trusts oneself to make higher reaching objectives his main pursuit, which is why I've limited self-actualization to a matter of evolutionary selection. My understanding has been that the surpassing of prior states of quality is only best if it's as an adaptation to circumstances which won't allow otherwise and that adaptation is a last resort after restoration or continuance is impossible.

Stuart- wrote:

All lifeforms' aggregate genes require much from their environment to actualize. The simplest of animals might require little more than air, water and the right food, while humans require much more. For example, they require particular geographical environments and culture. The culture they require for the fullest self-actualization is a culture that evolved along side the evolution of their genes. Life among a foreign culture still may allow much self-actualization, but is limited. That's because the culture that evolved along side their genes has been continually allowing for the reselection of similar genes.

This is why I say that man is about gene/meme, whereas animals are only about genes.
logos, they've called it - a transmission of memes.
This is what differentiate man from animal and it also sets the boundary for nihilism's power, i.e., it's range of effect is linguistic.
Environment, as it pertains to the human manimal, is about both - man-made (artificial) and natural.

Stuart- wrote:

One born into a relatively foreign culture can hardly expect to obtain the degree actualization as one born into his most specific kind's culture, but he can attempt to regain it to an extent.

This is why I say that memes are gene specific and that if they are transmitted (communicated) to alien genes they morph, adapting to different genetic possibilities - as these have been established, over time, as the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity - ideal and real.

Stuart- wrote:

When I say actualization is the full expression of genes I mean that the potential states the genes were selected for have been met. So any possible expression of one's inheritance outside that wouldn't qualify as actualization, as I define it.

I know...but environment is chaos and order which necessitates expanding inherited potentials to meet new and unforeseen demands - otherwise evolution would not be possible.
If all life simply reached its completion, then it would never grow or expand or change.
It's that an organism never can reach its completion that leaves space for adaptation to environmental changes, as these are produced by order/chaos, or patterned and non-patterned energies.
This absence of an absolute - complete, indivisible, immutable - state is what makes life and change possible.

Stuart- wrote:

While one may find himself subverting or suppressing those genes without a known purpose, because one intuitively understands the gene's problems, it seems one would first want to have a good understanding of what the actualization of his genes would be without any subversion or suppression.

This requires risk.
fro example, if someone's self-actualization was for mass massacre of his fellow humans, this has a cost imposed upon him by the memetic environment (ideologically based), even if it is not by a genetic or natural environment (DNA based).
At that point the mind would have to recognize or accurately evaluate the environment - his circumstances - it was forced to exist in and adapt accordingly - adaptation is a form of self-suppression - this is what cultivation entails.
Either through some proxy - a mentor./teacher, or through trial and error where self imposes self-restrictions to inherited potentials, the individual must sublimate his 'actualization'.
The gods - i.e., nature - is dominant.

Stuart- wrote:

It seems one would need a base before one trusts oneself to make higher reaching objectives his main pursuit, which is why I've limited self-actualization to a matter of evolutionary selection. My understanding has been that the surpassing of prior states of quality is only best if it's as an adaptation to circumstances which won't allow otherwise and that adaptation is a last resort after restoration or continuance is impossible.

Yes, but this requires a risk - what does not kill me only make me stronger.
stronger, in this case, means more aware of myself in relation to environment (other), and more able to self-control - to impose limits to my impulses - my full and uninhibited self-actualization. This is what we call civilized or cultivation.

Children have to be trained by adults so that they do not risk their well-being with this method of trial & error.

It's likely that most, or all peoples, have genetics which are best suited towards these elements:

Small tribes which are part of a larger tribe not exceeding ten thousand.
Finding food through hunting, gathering, limited raising of livestock and limited gardening/farming.
Continual or cyclical war between larger tribes of people of the same kind. On the outer edges of peoples' land war between people of somewhat differing kinds.
Cyclical war could be seasonal, or the can be a matter of years at war and not.
Highly limited inter-tribal alliances.
No slavery, but limited use of defeated tribes as vassals and unwilling allies.

Those conditions rely on certain limits to technology, or techniques, among all peoples in a region.
It seems unlikely that the technology beyond that way of life is natural. Meaning unlikely that any people had sufficient time to evolve along side it so as to be suited towards it as the best manifestation of their innate heredity.

Technology much beyond that imposes upon all peoples in the region and is not created by a healthy people. A healthy people, in an effort for an advantage in war, don't create such technologies, unless it is in response to an increase in technology by an unhealthy people. The response from the healthy will hurt their own health, but is a worthwhile compromise.
The reason it is not usually worthwhile compromise for healthy people to create better technology to survive a war with other healthy people is that the war usually wouldn't lead a decisive defeat for their kind. Furthermore, even if it would be true that the accumulation of defeats could lead to the extinction of a kind, even a race (in the broadest modern sense), not knowing that as a high probability, it wouldn't be worth poisoning oneself to prevent the possibility.

Presumably the unhealthy peoples who first developed technology beyond a healthy level did so not due to pressure from war but from the ill health created from prolonged peace. The prolonged peace being created among, then, healthy people due to unusual circumstances. For example, a possible explanation for the overly large, unhealth and highly technological society of Egypt is that some tribes within a people who evolved in harsh environments, elsewhere, were pushed out, and went to North Africa and found it easy to defeat those already there. This lead to a prolonged peace.

Once pressures for healthy tribes to advance technology to unhealthy levels is created, it soon overcomes the entire region, and, in fact, eventually it overran the earth.