Climbing Maslow's Mountain

This is not really a challenge to the universally accepted theory on Man's hierarchy of needs. I leave that to the psychologists.


Just wondering...Do we really need to climb and climb till we reach (if ever possible) the peak of Abraham Maslow's mountain, before knowing and actualising self? Isn't a prior knowledge of self helpful in determining its true needs?


Especially in these days of economic recession, we spend a great part of our lives focusing on just our basic needs, leaving others such as our need for safety,love, independence and self-actualisation.


And so we eat with the aim of satisfying our bodies, only to be told how we have fed ourselves with the wrong foods. We try to meet other physiological needs and end up with undesirable and often life threatening effects.


So we remain at the basic level, having not been able to meet the real needs of self, not even with all the money at our disposal.


Couldn't we just reverse the hierarchy of needs and begin with the search for self actualisation, attempting to first reach into the core of our beings and have at least a glimpse of what we truly need?


With this approach, we would know the right food, not necessarily the expensive or palatable ones, that our bodies need  and so on.




Desperate situations call for desperate solutions. This reverse journey may well be one of such...