The changing world under the corona virus threat-from human needs to SDGs and what next?

The COVID-19(coronavirus)disease has affected over 100 countries in a matter of weeks.The way humans live and work on planet Earth has changed profoundly over the last months.Many lives and livelihoods have been lost.Ways of working,shopping,and social interactions are all vastly different for most of us.We do not know when the current crisis will end,or how far we will“return”to the way things were before the pandemic.The world is experiencing one of the most transformative moments of the last 100 years.The social,economic,and political influences of the COVID-19 crisis have already been hugely momentous,we do not utterly understand it.Looking ahead,we have inevitably had to make important public health,economic,governance,and ecological decisions with less information than usual and to reverse recently adopted policies,which can lead to an era of disruptive transformations to sustainability.During these historic times,we must understand the hidden reality of the earth system and attempt to transform our needs so that we all have a sustained future on our planet.

The Matrix of Needs: Reframing Maslow’s Hierarchy

In his original article on human motivation, Abraham Maslow said “The present theory then must be considered to be a suggested program or framework for future research and must stand or fall, not so much on facts available or evidence presented, as upon researches yet to be done, researches suggested perhaps, by the questions raised in this paper” ([1], p370). This article endeavours to build on Maslow’s work, incorporating research in the neurobiological impact of childhood trauma which shows that safety is the most fundamental need for all human beings. Indigenous approaches to understanding human needs beyond the ending points of any one individual life and valuing cultural perpetuity are also integrated into this model. The methodology to synthesize this paper is the result of a transdisciplinary approach which values collaboration between disciplines that focus on the biological, social, and psychological factors that interact with each other in the dynamic dance of life. Communication is added as a core need of human beings, with Interdependent Actualization being seen as the capstone of human development. Incorporating the biological framework of the extra-cellular matrix with a visual model that shows the relationships between the parts of a whole, the Matrix of Needs restores the dynamic and interrelated nature of human needs in the same hope Maslow had, that this paper will generate ideas, launch discussions and build a framework for future researchers to better understand what it means to be human, and how to remove the barriers which impede our growth as individuals and as members of the human family.