Comments on: Maslow turned upside down?

By: The Center for Self-Actualization

The Center for Self-Actualization — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:52:12 +0000

This is the absolute first time I’ve seen the Hierarchy turned upside down. As a Professional Counselor using The Hierarchy of Needs as the basis for much of the work I do, I look forward to disucssing this with colleagues and some of my more fully actualized clients! Thanks.

By: Nikolay Kotzev

Nikolay Kotzev — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:18:47 +0000

Sometimes I think that we try to socialize everything, but do we need food because we are socialized? In the same time the presented model is amazing, showing how actually the system try to be or become.

By: Martin Börjesson

Martin Börjesson — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:19:18 +0000

Interesting thoughts! The other day I had a discussion about the free will, and maybe that has something to do with it. We are talking about degrees of free will. Now we are reaching to another level of free will on a systemic (statistical?) level. En emergent free will for the (connected) humanity as a whole??

By: Larry Dunbar

Larry Dunbar — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 23:38:56 +0000

I believe there are only two types of living organisms or complex adaptive systems at work in the world. I type them by their potentials, or where they are going and where they have been. There is type one the organism of need, as demonstrated by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Your Maslow’s hierarchy of wants, or in other words, the potential of want demonstrates type two.

We in the USA are of the type two varieties. In fact most of us don’t seem to know anymore what we actually need to survive. Our wants power this economy while our reality moves between the need to conform and our wanting to diversify.

By: YGG

YGG — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:46:59 +0000

Maslow sets a framework that was really innovative at the time; but that has aged a lot :
- The needs hierarchy is directly copied from North American/US culture (try it with Japanese or Indians…)
- The idea that satisfying a ‘lower level’ need is the key to next level is wrong: you’d rather die than beg (some actually do) or you blow yourself up ‘for the cause’;
- What comes first is ‘sense’ [like in ‘to make sense’]; you can simplify the pyramid in 3 levels (from the bottom up): survival, linking & sense; and sense propels the other levels: if what I live doesn’t make sense for me, I’ll let myself die; on the contrary, a human being can survive almost anything as long as they can give it meaning…
- By the way, the (5) senses are what we make sense with…and they give us a sense of direction: a new born child feels/smells their mother, orients towards her & experiments ‘it’s good’ (assigns a positive meaning).
- So, yes, I suggest we put Maslow’s pyramid on its tip!