quietlyradical

I know that I’m getting older when I begin to notice the names of my former middle school and high school teachers filling the obituary pages of the online version of my old hometown newspaper with disturbingly increasing regularity.  It shouldn’t come as such a shock; it has been four decades after all, since I entered middle school in the mid-1970s and even the “young, cool teachers” of that era are now considered to be members of the ever increasing demographic known as “the elderly.”  Heck, even some classmates a few years younger than me have grandchildren already; so it should come as no surprise that the adult figures from my teenaged years, some fantastically inspiring, and others not so much, should be making their transitions from this world to the next in ever growing numbers.  However, when I heard of the death of my high school psychology teacher a few years ago I found myself thinking a lot about a number of important lessons and ideals, both academic and otherwise, that may have slipped from view as a result of the messiness of real life.  Author Robert Fulghum wrote the book,  All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  While I cannot agree absolutely with that statement, I do believe in the spirit of Fulghum’s sentiment.  Early lessons often hold the answers to our current problems; the challenge to all of us, is in remembering to remember.

High school psychology was actually pretty basic.  I recall reading about the various “roles” that we play in our lives; learning the very sanitized version of the philosophy of Sigmund Freud and the experiments of Pavlov and his dogs to illustrate the idea of positive reinforcement.  However, the lesson that stands out most clearly in my memory was Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  It seemed as if we spent weeks memorizing the pyramid-like diagram and the examples of each type of need: physical, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

Pyramids, whether those constructed by the ancient Egyptians in the Valley of the Kings, the ones that confounded me in Geometry when I attempted to calculate their volume and surface area, or the now obsolete Food Pyramid, used to teach us children of the 1970s about healthy eating all have certain characteristics in common.  They have a broad base as their foundation and gradually build to a narrow peak.  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid is no different as it is presented in most Psychology textbooks. 

Physical needs such as  food, water, oxygen, clothing, shelter, and sleep form the broad base.  These basic needs are common and often largely taken for granted; however, it is generally believed that none of the other needs can even be pursued until these needs are met.  The next layer of the pyramid is comprised of the safety needs, usually described as the need for a safe environment, good health, job security, and security of self-identity.  Once the physical needs are met, safety needs are the next critical group necessary for life to continue.  The third level represents the needs related to belonging.  Friendship, familial bonds, love relationships, and intimacy are the components of this level.  Here human beings move beyond survival needs toward issues related to quality of life. Esteem needs are next and include characteristics such as self-confidence, self-respect, respect for others and a good reputation.  The pyramid comes to a peak with self-actualization which is described as values related to faith, morality, acceptance, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance of facts, and lack of prejudice.

In that basic high school psychology class, Mr. E taught us that while reaching self-actualization was the ultimate goal, it would only be possible to attain once most of the lower level needs were met first. Now, forty years later, as I watch many aspects of society seemingly on the way to full collapse, I can’t help but wonder whether this worldwide implosion is perhaps the result of human beings violating the principle of adequately fulfilling lower-level needs first.  There seems to be some evidence to support the idea that we are attempting to fill our various needs in inappropriate ways or that we are grasping at higher level needs while attempting to bypass necessary steps along the way.

Income inequality has resulted in a situation where large segments of the population aren’t able to meet their basic physical needs.  Additionally, those who have attained higher levels on the pyramid seem to be largely isolated from those at the bottom.  Unfortunately, this seems to lead many of those at the top to make sweeping judgements about the so-called laziness, lack of personal responsibility, and poor life choices of those failing to secure adequate food, clothing, and shelter. It somehow doesn’t seem to occur to those at the top that it may be difficult to make sound life choices when one is hungry, homeless, sleep deprived, and unable to seek basic medical care.

Safety needs are another area in which there seems to be a major disconnect.  Guns, drugs, and violent crimes are far more prevalent in low-income and minority communities.  Conservative voices on discussion forums and social media frequently attempt to draw a line between the lack of safety in certain neighborhoods and a lack of character of not only the perpetrators but also the victims.  “What about black on black crime?” is an often cited dog whistle. What these commenters fail to acknowledge is that all people are more likely to suffer violence at the hands of people that they know; this isn’t unique to the African-American community.  Additionally, there seems to be no recognition that suffering from inadequate food, clothing, shelter, and other basic needs may, in fact, drive the poor to turn to criminal activities and drug use as acts of desperation.  Those who are unable to obtain even the most fundamental needs of survival perhaps develop an “I’ve got nothing to lose” attitude.  For this reason, simplistic platitudes from the more fortunate such as, “If ‘you people’ would just stop killing each other and tearing up your own neighborhoods then everything would be fine,” are simply not helpful.

In addition to a certain amount of tone deafness among those already at the top of the pyramid, there is also the problem of those at the bottom attempting to skip ahead to higher levels as a method of soothing the suffering they experience as a result of unmet physical and safety needs. The need for belonging is a prime example.  I have known cases of single mothers living in poverty who continue to have children out of wedlock in an effort to satisfy the need for love and familial bonds. Young people of color try to cobble together some semblance of “family”, by joining a gang perhaps because they don’t think that meeting the foundational levels of the hierarchy are even possible for them.  Therefore, they attempt to skip ahead to the higher levels in order to ease the continued pain resulting from a sense of hopelessness.

This sense of hopelessness is further fueled by the extreme difficulty that poor people and people of color have in ever fulfilling their need for esteem.  The world is constantly telling these individuals that they are less than human and that they have no voice and no value.  They are not respected by police, by politicians, or by society at large. Then when they voice their displeasure at these very real injustices, they are often accused either of exaggerating or outright lying in an attempt to “play the victim.” In this type of environment, it should not be a revelation when inner city beefs over perceived disrespect, combined with a proliferation of guns and drugs regularly end in tragedy. 

Finally, self-actualization, which represents the ultimate prize, seems to have been lost to all of humanity.  It often appears that there is even a lack of understanding as to what self-actualization really is.  In the United States especially, there seems to be an undue emphasis on freedom and personal liberty as the ultimate measure of happiness.  Like spoiled adolescents, many Americans want the freedom to behave selfishly, to own and carry guns with no regard for public safety, to push conspiracy theories, to shun the wearing of masks and vaccines in the midst of a global pandemic, and to ignore the ramifications of climate change.  Rather than aspiring to attaining equality for all, embracing science, education, critical thinking and perhaps, most importantly, extending a helping hand to ensure that the poor, the elderly, the disabled, immigrants, and people of color can reach solid foundations of physical needs and safety so that everyone can ascend to true self-actualization, far too many Americans seem to adopt an “us against them” mentality.

Attempts to help ensure that people on the bottom rungs of our society gain the solid foundation of having at least their physical and safety needs met largely face irrational resistance.  Social safety net programs to help in guaranteeing adequate healthcare, affordable housing, and free education are denounced as socialism.   Federal and state legislatures thwart the protection of voting rights, implementation of stricter gun control laws, and police reform at every turn.  In a sense, the Pyramid of Needs has been turned upside down, leaving the 99% to precariously balance on the inadequate foundation of unmet physical, safety and belonging needs, while the very rich, vainly try to bolster their esteem and achieve self-actualization, not by helping others, but rather by focusing on grabbing money, material positions, and vanity projects such as trips into space.  Finally, add a global pandemic and the undeniable negative effects of climate change to this precarious situation and it won’t be long before the pyramid balancing unsteadily on its tip will topple in full collapse.  I only hope that we can somehow reorder our priorities as a nation before it is too late.