The Hierarchy of (All Kinds of) Needs
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
~Abraham Maslow
At the 2006 TED Conference, Sir Ken Robinson shared his observation that “every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects…. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts – everywhere on earth.” He then went on to point out how today’s educational system was originally designed to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. Today, however that old hierarchy no longer works. Due to both global interconnectedness and a resulting demand for creativity, the arts (in the broadest sense) are of utmost importance. The hierarchy has been turned on its head, and the world’s education systems must to adapt to this perspective shift.
USDA Food Guide Pyramid, adopted in 1992
The USDA's New Food Pyramid, adopted 2005
In 1943, psychology professor Abraham Maslow proposed a “hierarchy of needs” in his paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Based on a study of the most emotionally healthy people he could find, Maslow concluded that there are five levels of needs which motivate humans to behave the way they do: Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem, Self-Actualization. Maslow believed “that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire (or focus motivation upon) the secondary or higher level needs.” However, like so many other hierarchies, Maslow’s might be in need of an update.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
As we continue our pursuit of community renewal at the edge of chaos, we must be cautious about over-simplifying ourselves. We are complex beings: intellectually, physically and emotionally.
Okay–I'll jump in! The other night we saw, on BBC, children in a Pakistani hospital. Malnutrition had taken its toll, making one little girl, in particular, appear to be much younger than she actually is–due to both natural disaster and violence there. I'll have to agree with Maslow's placing physical needs and safety as priorities; however, your suggestion that Love might co-exist at that level is worth considering. Could it be that Love (a healthy love; the ability to love oneself and to receive love from others) is a key to receving and processing whatever is available of one's physiological provisions, and also a key to perceiving one's surroundings in terms of what is safe and what is unsafe? For example, if an orphan does not experience Love, then could he/she be more oblivious (and therefore more vulnerable) to danger than a child, living in the same environment, who feels Loved and therefore is more alert. Moreover, could the "feeling-Loved" child even physically process more efficiently whatever food, etc. exists in the same environment than the "feeling-unLoved" child? (Please excuse misspellings and "mis-grammars.")
Exactly as you say. There were really two points to this (hastily written) post:
1.) What Sir Ken Robinson, the USDA and Manfred Max-Neef all saw was that each individual has different needs: intellectually, physically and emotionally. When we make assumptions about others' needs based on our own, we stifle the diversity that makes a "mob" intelligent. 2.) Maslow's hierarchy is valuable as a general tool for understanding human needs, but what he might have missed is the relationship between the different "levels." Psychologists talk about the "overriding effect of a competing affection." The idea that we can be so motivated by self-actualization, for instance, that we forget to eat.
Good post!
Pyramids are symbols, since Egyptian culture we have been using them for presenting targets, evolutions and organizations.
You haven't spoken about one of the most interesting and currently changing pyramids: companies hierarchies!
My last company used to have levels and numbers in the levels, once you were in the people asked "are you SC3, or M1?"… I always answered I'm Eva, pleased to meet you!
Going on with this, is nice for me to know that there is a "movement" that speaks about "net companies", that are completely flat and are using social media and other tools to work as teams coordinated. Working equally to the ants!
Dave Snowden just posted this on hierarchies: http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/2010/11/perdition_they_name_is.php#more (Thought it might be relevant to this post on hierarchies.)