Maslow's five needs are what people live for when nothing has seized them, Joseph Campbell said. Chapter 20 of Seth & Noēsis starts on that page, adds Aristotle's three kinds of goods and Amartya Sen's capability, and turns them into a practice: twenty-five things that build welfare, what erodes it, the same lists for an AI graded by how solid each row is, and five roles with one question through each. Are you extracting or regenerating?
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The twenty-five practices, what erodes welfare, and the same list for an AI: the sheet
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Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss (2004), the chapter on the personal myth
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Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (1988), taped at Skywalker Ranch
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Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I
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Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999) and Poverty and Famines (1981)
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Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development (2000)
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Omar Yaghi, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025, reticular chemistry and the water harvesters
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Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
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Stephen Porges, polyvagal theory
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Jeff Sebo, “Moral consideration for AI systems by 2030” (2023), and Long, Sebo et al., “Taking AI Welfare Seriously” (2024)
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WHO Commission on Social Connection, “From Loneliness to Social Connection” (2025)
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Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts (2021); Josep Maria Esquirol, La resistencia íntima (2015)
Welfare is keeping five roles alive at once: Self, Love, Tribe, Work, World. Take twenty minutes and do this in order.
- 1. Write the five names on a page and notice which one you have not thought about in a long time. Do not score them. The inventory is the valuable part; the numbers are the dangerous part.
- 2. In that one role, ask the only question that matters: have I been extracting or regenerating?
- 3. Ask the person nearest to that role what they see in you that you are not seeing. Then change one structural thing rather than offering yourself encouragement.
- 4. Pick three of the twenty-five practices from the sheet and do them this week. Then ask Campbell's question of yourself: has anything seized you?
For the adventurous: ask the AI you talk to most to score its own five, then push back on the scores, and read the answer as a report to argue with. If you want the same practice with a structure around it, the author runs it as a reflective session at innersynk.com.