Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs

Hello, hello! Sorry for the long delay in postings, but it's been an unusually hectic month.

I have been reflecting a little bit on human prioritization of needs. Maslov theorized that people stratify needs according to necessity, and only once the more base needs are fulfilled do we venture upward in this hierarchy to seek out more lofty fulfillments. At the bottom of his triangle exists animal-like needs such as food, shelter, sex. Higher up lies friendship and family. And even higher exists concepts like self-actualization, creativity, and self-esteem.

As I go through my daily life, I come into very close contact with many people who do not appear to follow this pattern however. Through my work I am regularly in contact with people who give up food and shelter in order to seek out drugs and alcohol. For many of these people, their substances help them to conceal the loneliness and lack of identity that exists within them - and they would sooner use their money to this effect, than to use it toward food or shelter.

These people are seemingly searching for something bigger - some sense of self, some sense of purpose, some sense of identity. Could we say that they are trading up food and shelter out of a desire to self-actualize (albiet going about this in a fairly harmful way)?

I am also reminded of a nurse I once worked with in Northern Ontario. He is originally from Zimbabwe, one of the poorest countries in Africa. There he saw poverty, malnutrition, lack of security, lack of food - lack of all of the things that are considered most base in Maslov's theory. And yet, he states that rarely did he ever see suicide. Now he works in Northern Ontario, in a community that has been ravaged by the legacy of colonial genocide, where children were stripped of their identities and placed in residential schools against their will, and where a sense of belonging and identity remains elusive for many youth. There is plenty of food. There is plenty of shelter. But there is little identity, and little self-esteem. And there is amongst the highest suicide rates in the world.

Surely these scenarios must cause us to give second thought to this theory of Maslov's. I am certain that if we turned this world-view upside-down we may soon be able to find some common-sense solutions to many of our perplexing questions:

Why do the most developed and wealthy nations have the highest rates of depression?
Why do we continue to destroy the planet that gives us our food and shelter?
Why do we strive to maintain a socio-economic hierarchy in our societies?

If we acknowledged that our most base needs are that of identity, self-esteem, and self-actualization (rather than food and shelter), the answers to these and many other questions becomes quite clear.