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Although great amounts of discussion has taken place regarding having versus being, I believe that the arguments should be placed on multiple continua as opposed to a singular dichotomy. What are the proposed continua? I believe that three nonorthogonal dimensions capture much of the discussion: 1) social cohesiveness, 2) individualism/collectivism, and 3) objectification. The having orientation consistently includes the concepts of alienation and human disconnectedness. In order to progress toward being, a person must become familiar with oneself as well as the social environment. Without empathy for oneself and others, one fixates solely on having objects. With a connection only to nonhuman objects, a person neglects important dimensions of objects. In this case, basic salient features dominate perceptions. Social cohesiveness is a basic need of people– similar to food and shelter. As with other unmet basic needs, people tend to use lower level cognitive processes in decision making. Having is a good survival technique. However, the strategy may go too far if it becomes an ingrained response pattern. Having therefore becomes a more dominate feature of a person’s worldview. Collectivism versus individualism is another related factor. Those coming from an individualist perspective tend to be aligned with having, at least in philosophical discussions, and collectivists with being. This is obviously related to social cohesiveness. From a counter perspective, one may state that individualism is the only path to self-actualization, which may be true if people were not inherently social animals with a evolutionary history of collectivism. It is only in developed contemporary societies that mass individualism has been enabled. For the most part people do not have to collaborate little to collect the items for living. For example, most people do not grow their own food. At first glance and due to its common place in developed Westernized cultures, individualism seems to be reasonable because enables having many objects and an delusion of being. An individual must be placed in some sort of collectivism in order to approach being. Some people perceive having as objectification. I will make the naive assumption that human beings do not perceive everything in world as objects. It is impossible to define being in practice as a lack of objectification. The issue again is that having tends to perceive objects in a more simplistic way. In part because having in contemporary societies elicits emotions due to its judging perspective, and emotions shifts decision making to more default cognitive biases. A person only distantly knows where he or she is in the social hierarchy due to the accumulation of objects, but one is at the same time disconnected from many social experiences. In being, one values perceiving more than judging and can therefore tap into higher cognition processes (approach a more rational state even in one’s perspective of emotions). Being integrates emotions and cognitive processes, whereas having places them at a greater distance. To be continued.