an audience being collection of friends to share/show experiences to.

be it family, friends, colleagues, people met only couple of times and sometimes strangers. is this because we are social animals?

i guess an audience fulfills all of our needs. Maslow’s hiererachy of needs - basic, safety, love+belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

the requirement of an audience is evident in all the needs except the final need - self-actualization. this post tries to elaborates on this.

basic needs of food, water, air, etc. need an audience because it can work as a form of insurance and provide atleast sufficient fulfillment of the needs. for instance, a group of humans would usually settle near a river to ensure water.

safety need of shelter and such is automatically satisfied by humans. intersection of all such audiences for any individual form the people-sphere?

love+belonging: audiences provide love and a sense of belonging just by being there.

esteem: the interactions of the audiences provide for this.

self-actualization: the need for an audience for this need is unclear. this need is a purely personal drive. what role would an audience play for the fulfillment of this need? one counter-argument could be that an audience provides a method to achieve self-actualization. however, this is only because this need is the last need so method is already provided because the earlier needs are fulfilled. the method for self-actualization is no consequence as the methods can be several. if self-actualization is being achieved, a method exists.

an audience is not a requirement for self-actualization but is a strong requirement for all the other lower needs. i acknowledge this and incorporate it in my life but it displeases me a little. i will be lying to myself if i said i want to remove all my audience requirements from my life. i would nevertheless be expecting all the needs to be fulfilled but the role of audience is diminshed and if possible ultimately made simply an observant.