William's Willson Argument - Essay Example

Quality of life is not a simple identifier, nor is it necessarily easy to determine what the term actually means as some people identify the quality of their lives based on different metrics. For some, quality is about health and family. For others, it centers upon money or position. There is another group of people who define quality of life in terms of personal or professional fulfillment. To guide the analysis here, it will be useful to review Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to find a baseline for a life that has quality.

In their review of what motivates humans, Stacey & DeMartino (1958) note the arrangement of human needs, as presented by Maslow, to be five levels, each building upon the other, i.e., physiological needs, then safety needs, love needs, followed by esteem needs, and concluded with the need for self-actualization (p. 2). The logic of this hierarchy is straightforward in that a person who is hungry or in danger is not going to be concentrating on whether they are being actualized or fulfilled.

At that moment, quality of life means food or safety. This is where the question of what quality of life means to an individual comes into play. For example, there are many who equate higher quality of life with financial means or the higher social status money brings to an individual. Yet, a child born to the richest person in the world who has terminal cancer would likely not be identified as having a high quality of life. The ability of the disease, which no amount of money or social class can cure, obviates what most would describe as a high-quality life.

The poor minority family with healthy children could arguable be sustaining a higher quality of life. For the purposes of this paper, however, the assumption will be that quality of life includes the premise that sufficient physiological health and safety are assured, and the qualities of love, self-esteem, and fulfillment are the variable