First, some definitions from the frame of this discourse -
Needs: Requirements to sustain the existence of the individual.
Optimizations: Requirements to sustain the existence of the genes of the individual.
Preferences: Requirements to satisfy all additional incentives of the individual.
== Maslow's "Needs" ==
Maslow's 5th (highest) level: Self Actualization - Maximization of self.
Maslow's 4th level: Esteem - Respect, Self-Esteem, Status, Recognition, Liberty
Maslow's 3rd level: Love/Belonging - Friendship, Family, Intimacy, Connection
Maslow's 2nd level: Safety - Personal, Property, Resources/Employment, Hygiene
Maslow's 1st (lowest) level: Physiological - Food, Air, Water, Sleep, Shelter/Clothing
== My Frame (My "hierarchy") ==
The bottom two levels, "Physiological and Safety Needs", represent Needs.
Needs represent our capability to extract and secure sufficient resources from our environment to exist.
The next two levels, "Love/Belonging and Esteem Needs", represent Optimizations.
Optimizations improve our competitive fitness within our social environment and within our in-group. This means our value to the group and our group's value to us.
The apex, "Self Actualization Needs", represents Preferences.
At this level, we have achieved sufficient mastery of self to exert influence and power(ownership) over our environment to arrange that environment to support the facilitation of our optimizations and our needs. This represents the full integration of agency, autonomy, and responsibility over one's domains. Transcendence.
(Note: from my perspective, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Plato's Hierarchy of Forms, and Aristotle's Hierarchy of the Soul all observe the same basic dynamic --- nature's demand that life satisfy lower-order requirements before higher-order requirements, the distinction between these descriptions, including my own, corresponds to our evolving understanding of the science of nature's demands --- None of this is new)