The Supposed Hierarchy Of Needs

The hierarchy of needs as attributed to Abraham Maslow is often visualized as a pyramid with the lower needs supposedly needing to be addressed before one can move on to confronting the higher needs.  Starting at the bottom with physiological needs like food and ending at the top with self-actualization, the maximizing of personal potential in different aspects of one's life, this version of the hierarchy has become quite popular in the West.  It nonetheless is based on false or assumed ideas, one of them being that the needs that are put at the top of the pyramid cannot be met before the lower and less existential needs are taken care of.  This is all the more erroneous given that the overtly philosophical exploration that would be associated with the top level of the hierarchy is actually omnipresent in all parts of life to some degree and can be accessed at any time.

Someone could reach intellectual and emotional peaks without even having a strong relationship with family or the relative safety of a house.  Some people might also never understand or care about even basic but abstract metaphysical or moral truths even if they have all the physical comforts they desire, no mental or physical health issues, immense wealth, social approval, and constant free time.  While many people would probably not even begin to understand how how logical axioms are at the heart of everything, including truths and experiences pertaining to what the hierarchy of needs addresses like food, shelter, or social interactions, it is true that anyone at all, including the poor or homeless or starving, can look to reason and understand it regardless of their various life circumstances.

At the same time, helping some people with physiological needs, as Maslow called them, might prompt them to pay attention to the philosophical ideas of their savior in ways they never would have done on their own or with help from others even if they had never needed assistance for physiological needs in the first place.  For a relevant Biblical side to this, consider how Jesus is said to have healed people before he actually addressed their theological and broader philosophical standing.  This is not because people are incapable of understanding logical axioms, their own consciousness, and more until they have eaten or been relieved of medical problems, but because people who are not already used to dwelling on explicitly philosophical truths/concepts might never think about them while they are sick, hungry, or thirsty.

The possibility of people ignoring or embracing the weightier nature of logic and existential issues despite the status of their physiological needs is one of the most significant errors in this hierarchy.  According to how Maslow's arrangement of needs is commonly described, people need to satisfy the the lower or supposedly more foundational parts of the pyramid to move onto other needs.  However, some of what would typically be considered in the self-actualization category at the top is either present at all times or accessible no matter how many unfulfilled needs or desires a person has in the other categories.  Rationalistic knowledge, deep self-awareness in the light of reason, and all that a pursuit of abstract, ultimate truths entails is not only for people who have every social belonging, physical safety, and esteem need met.  They are parts of reality that all people can immediately discover and savor to some extent.

Whether or not they realize it, people are fully relying on logical axioms to even understand less explicitly philosophical things like physiological needs or a random, unexamined desire for social acceptance (which would correspond to the hierarchy's "esteem needs"), and direct awareness of reason is the deepest, most all-encompassing (nothing but the laws of logic can even be all-encompassing since possibility, necessity, and thus truth itself depend on reason!), and most foundational thing a person could have.  From start to finish, all of life hinges on reason despite most people being utterly inept at understanding and wielding it, and all truths about everything, from the most abstract to the most practical facts that always overlap to some degree, are both made true and revealed by reason.  At best, most categories in Maslow's hierarchy of needs are just a means to an end instead of the foundation of reality itself.