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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory proposed by Psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943 in a paper called ‘A theory of human motivation’

It has been much discussed, presented and copied over the years in various different formats but to my mind, is still the best analysis of human motivation that I’ve seen.

The majority of humans, it would seem, would fit into the hierarchy that Maslow proposed which is effectively a triangle as shown in the picture above, with physiological needs at the bottom and self actualisation at the top.

Anyone who studied Psychology at school will have seen this.

It was referenced again in ‘Factfulness’ by Rosling when he talked about the classification of wealth in the world that he proposed some years ago which has now been adopted by the United Nations.

Rosling doesn’t classify wealth into the have and have not’s, the West and the East or the developed and developing countries. He classifies it into four levels.

People earning $1 a day.

People earning $4 a day.

People earning $16 a day.

People earning $64 a day.

You would think that this would show a progression up Maslow’s Hierarchy and, to some degree, it does. The difficulty is that almost everybody gets stuck one below the top.

Everybody gets stuck at self esteem and status and they thing that more money will give them more self esteem and more status but the purpose is not to get more of that, the purpose is to move to the point of the triangle which is self actualisation and reaching your potential.

The problem with acquiring stuff and money and status through wealth is that it doesn’t give you knowledge or insight so you continue to acquire those things, which in turn block you from progressing to the point of the triangle.

When some people get rich and they finally realise this they try to buy their way to the point but that’s not possible because the point only exists inside your own head and can’t be given to you by somebody else.

This is important enough that we should be teaching it to all our children, not just Psychology students. It would be a very different world indeed if people’s status was measured by whether or not they’d reached the point of Maslow’s Hierarchy rather than accumulation of bank balances, pieces of plastic and electrical consumables.

Blog Post Number: 1685