Suzanne Taylor - Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Was Incomplete

https://suespeaks.org/ Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - and Abraham Maslow. It’s closer than you think. I wrote earlier this week about how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs had a profound effect on me in my early years. I discovered Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when I was eleven years old. Understanding that hierarchy as an eleven-year-old made me feel that I was enlightened; like I knew something most other people didn't. I didn't know the whole story. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a very useful tool. However, I had never considered that it comes from a very distinct worldview with its own assumptions and biases. That doesn’t make it wrong or evil, just incomplete. I only recently learned how incomplete. In 1938, Maslow traveled to Northern Alberta, Canada where one of four Blackfoot (also known as the Siksika) Nations is located. This was the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Nation. Maslow spent six weeks with the Blackfoot Nation as part of his research. Analysis of his work shows that he really didn’t understand their ways of knowing. It appears that Maslow may have been influenced by the Blackfoot. Later in his life, he questioned his hierarchy, but it does not appear he based his hierarchy on their worldview. A common criticism of Maslow’s hierarchy is that it is rather individualistic, and comes from an individual-centered society, not a collective-focused society. Maslow found the Blackfoot “a very generous people” and said, “They seem definitely not to have any major anxieties or repressed aggression.” These were things he was expecting, because they were prominent in the world he came from, and he found it odd that a culture could be less anxious and less aggressive than what he had known from his previous experiences. Maslow describes their society as unusual. From his point of view, it was. Maslow experienced the Blackfoot people from a very Euro-centric point of view. He didn’t come out and say that their culture was inferior, but by calling it unusual he seems to be categorizing it as something “less than” his own. I’m not being overly critical of Maslow. He was a man of his time, and I’m not surprised by the reactions of a white man in an Indigenous culture 80 years ago being one of misunderstanding and bemusement. He isn’t dismissive of the Blackfoot people. He liked and admired them. But he didn’t seem to get it. He didn’t seem to understand that the Blackfoot way of looking at the world could be superior to his in some ways or could lead to better outcomes. Maslow’s perspective was narrow. He had not had many cultural experiences outside of European traditions. He didn’t understand their culture. It looks like he may have understood them better later in life, but we will get to that. First, let’s learn more about the Blackfoot worldview.