Maslow & Braddock
This past week I was reading Maslow’s article about his well-known motivation theory and the hierarchy of needs. Throughout I couldn’t help but liken the theories to Braddock.
Many of us who have come here did so with visions of a lower cost of living making time available for the pursuit of self-actualization (or at least esteem needs) within a community that supports not only out-of-the-box thinking but action. Instead this past winter we found ourselves tossed back to the second tier, struggling with safety needs as we spent most of our time and energy figuring out how to keep warm. And by warm, I mean we celebrated a 40-degree room. Some spaces, like those being rehabbed, relied entirely on kerosene heaters and didn’t even achieve this level of warmth.
Maslow points out that once a person has dealt with these lower tier needs, things will never be thought of the same way again. If a man starves, he will not take food for granted in a way that he may have when he had only experienced food as a given. After spending an entire winter cooking while wearing a winter coat, hat, and scarf while watching my breath hover in front of my face and wishing I could mix things with gloves on but instead having my fingers go numb ... I appreciate climate controlled environments so much more now. It’s like stepping into another world when I visit people in towns where broken or missing windows, old boilers that only heat two radiators, and no insulation are things of nightmares instead of a common reality. What’s even worse is that this low level of living standards actually cost MORE than all of the comfort I experienced in winters past in Alaska.
Now as spring enters the picture and we are thawing out, there is a palpable change in the air. We are aiming again for needs a level or three above safety. Things are moving again. And hopefully next winter some of the renovations will be done and there will be warmer buildings so that we don’t all end up hibernating our higher level goals as we search for heat.
Source
Maslow, Abraham H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
