A long-time side quest of mine has been to better understand human behaviour. I’ve been trying to distil experiences and observations into simple and useful principles, which I could use to better understand why people do the things they do.
Principles describing human behaviour are essential to think clearly about the world. Not only because human behaviour is responsible for creating today’s world, and being the main driver in creating the world of tomorrow, but also because it’s the most fundamental and most important thing to understand if we want to make sense of the ever-changing dynamics of the world we experience.
So, I created four axioms which are simple and useful to the extent that every other plausible and useful theory of human behaviour can logically be derived from them.
Humans want and need different things.
Wants and needs depend on who the human is.
Wants and needs change all the time because the human changes.
Humans will act to get what they want and need.
An important point to be aware of is that a person’s wants and needs are often hidden —subconscious— and therefore not clearly identifiable for external observers or for the person themselves. Plus, wants and needs always come in groups, which always necessitates trade-offs between them.
An axiom is a statement that can be considered to be true without any further proof. My personal observations have yet to provide me with any examples that could prove any of the four axioms to be false. If you have an example in mind please let me know.
I apply my axioms like the fundamental axioms in mathematics. I consider them to be true and then logically think through instances of human behaviour using the axioms as building blocks.
Their usefulness and power are visible in different instances. One of them being understanding relationships —all kinds of relationships. For example, a relationship between two people (A and B) exists when the pursuit of what person A wants is advanced by person B’s action, simultaneously, that same action advances the pursuit of what person B wants. The advancement of what two people want through the same action is what we describe as a relationship between two people. This illustrates why some love relationships work. Each individual’s actions, in aggregate, align with what both lovers want. Couples who have been married for decades intuitively know that this is true without ever having thought about it. They have figured this out over time by simply exploring what works and what doesn’t.
Another instance —when humans want to influence the behaviour of other humans— shows the power of the axioms. To influence someone’s behaviour we have to either influence who the other person is by for example manipulating their beliefs, or influence the specific thing the other person wants by for example putting them into jail and taking away their freedom. The former being the more difficult yet very effective approach for influencing people’s behaviours.
Using the four axioms to think about other people’s behaviour helps to understand, acknowledge, and accept the true nature of other people’s existences. A crucial and necessary first step in finding solutions for a peaceful co-existence of humanity.