Maslow’s work in developing his theory regarding the Hierarchy of needs is commonly quoted, yet it meaning and truth are seldom examined in any depth. I’d like to visit the theory to highlight its value to us as we lurch through our societal struggles.
Maslow was a humanist whose basic belief was that everyone at their core strove to be all they could be. He hypothesized that human growth toward self-actualization followed a predictable course which became “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”. From what I’ve read, and I’m no expert on Maslow by any means, Maslow didn’t judge much about who was where on the pyramid, why they were at each level, and what they were doing wrong or right to be there. Today it seems that discussion consumes our attention.
Maslow observed that basic needs like food, water, clothing, shelter must be fulfilled before higher needs could be considered as important or valuable. The very top of his pyramid included morality, creativity, understanding of others and rational thought. It is difficult to argue that someone starving to death has any real interest in morality.
Study the accompanying illustration of Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid. It’s likely that most of us know people living within each strata of those needs. Some of us struggle to secure even the basic needs of life (Physiological) and some of us are blessed with an abundant life achieving even the Self-actualization needs.
As a nation, our collective assumption is that virtually everyone can or should be able to secure the basic physiological and safety needs. In the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, don’t most of us feel our society generally is enjoying the fulfillment of many of the higher-level needs as well?
Here is where thinking gets “dicey”. We live in a country with a population of about three hundred million people. The distribution of population among the various levels of Maslow’s hierarchy is uneven (many more at the bottom with fewer at the top) but many millions of people live in each level. Most are citizens or legal residents of this country expecting the protections and benefits of living is such a prosperous nation.
With such a large population, it seems likely we would naturally share a multitude of different beliefs, concerns, attitudes and expectations. With countless national origins, cultural backgrounds and differing ethnicities, how is it possible we would be of one mind on most things let alone everything? How can we be a principled nation and feel individually that I matter and deserve to be heard and respected, yet believe that anyone who isn’t exactly like me is automatically undeserving.
Is it not obvious that everyone living in the higher levels of Maslow’s pyramid would benefit immeasurably by helping everyone living at lower levels of the pyramid to move to higher and greater awareness? Our leaders like to point to the miracle of our huge middle class that developed right after WWII as a primary reason for our affluence as a nation, yet in the last three decades we have been destroying it from the top down.
Our work at Spirit of Eagles is about helping people develop greater self-awareness. The people we admire most throughout our history often displayed pronounced self-awareness and resided at the very top of Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid. The benefits individually and collectively of climbing to the very peak of Maslow’s pyramid are too numerous to list.
I’d like to finish this blog with a poem I’ve enjoyed for much of my adult life.
THE COLD WITHIN
By James Patrick Kinney
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story’s told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first woman held hers back.
For of the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.
The next man looking cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn’t bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
The third man sat in tattered clothes;
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store.
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight.
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.
And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.
The logs held tight in death’s still hands
Was proof of human sin.
They didn’t die from the cold without,
They died from the cold within.
Can we see the deep wisdom of Gandhi when he said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would serve to solve most of the problems of the world.” Check out our online course, Exploring the Fundamentals of Self-awareness, and our coaching and training offerings.
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