SR96. 24 December 2006.
Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Sharpe. All rights reserved.
Submitted for consideration as a conference presentation.
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate College, Union Institute & University,
Harris
ksharpe@ksharpe.com
www.ksharpe.com
Steven Reiss’s research indicates that 16 core desires (including basic needs, like food, as well as social desires like honor, power, and human contact) drive our behavior, in fact they lead to ‘nearly everything important a human being wants.’ ‘These desires are what guide our actions,’ explains Reiss’s colleague Susan Havercamp. ‘In a sense, we are studying the meaning of life.’
A fundamental motive is, by definition, ‘a universal end goal that accounts for psychologically significant behavior.’ By this, Reiss means that fundamental motives induce drives in almost all people (universal) and that these drives encourage us to pursue extensive activities (psychologically significant behaviors; purposive activities) for their own sakes (end goals). We all feel hunger and this feeling pushes us to acquire, prepare, and eat food; we pay a great deal of attention to food.
Many religions, both traditionally and phenomenologically, have to do with one’s meaning in life. For example, traditional Christianity says that God has a purpose for each human being and we should follow it. Pursuing a purpose provides meaning for life. Since the 16 fundamental motives also have to do with the bases for and content of one’s meaning in life, the study of them ought to relate to the study of religion as individually experienced. They may also relate to meaning as a religion theoretically defines it.
This paper introduces and develops Reiss’s results, proposes them as an appropriate and different way for science and religion to approach its subject, and offers research projects that could result.