Hanoi
I find schedules profoundly comforting, but not bad schedules.
In my second school term-I’m now wrapping up my third-I had a glorious schedule. I had 5 classes in three days, all in the first half of the day, and that was it. Granting that homework (It’s all homework as school is online) accounts for 80% of the course work, I still felt that I always had lots of time, and I never missed a class that I didn’t want to. This term I have A class Monday morning, one Wednesday mid-morning, one Wednesday night, one Thursday morning, and one Friday afternoon. It’s fragmented, weird, and I don’t like it at all.
The whole point of this endeavour is to, eventually, be able to work from home, or even remotely, and experience a work/life balance with a less austere connection to geography. It’s not that I don’t like work, not at all, I love work, but I also love being home, which, given my long-term semi-vagrant status, might sound counterintuitive.
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, biology come first, then comfort, then belonging, then self-esteem, then self-actualization. I’ve been unconsciously experimenting with this for a while, and, now looking back at my unintentional scientific method, I see several problems with cleaving to close to this approach.
You know that sorting game, the one where you have three pegs and 5 rings, and you have to get all the rings collected on the third peg from the first and in the same order? That’s how I view Maslow’s pyramid. I don’t think one is just able to accept the order and advance up the pyramid. Life doesn’t allow it, and that’s the challenge. Take Viktor Frankl for example, and his wonderful book Man’s Search for Meaning. He was able to culture in himself the top three while enduring a near total absence of tier one, and while under the obscene daily reminder of Arbeit Macht Frei.
There is no model for linear progression that can be followed. We do not thrive in indolence. Biological needs being met does not ensure safety, and safety does not ensure love and belonging, but love and belonging do require it. I feel like the two top rings are somewhat disconnected from the other, more basic needs. Or maybe I’m just processing my way into accepting the hierarchy. I have to allow for either possibility, or another, if it presents itself.
Is esteem dependent upon belonging? That’s a bit tougher. It depends upon your history, and what you may have belonged to in the past. A bad FOO, for example, might lead one to establish a mighty self-esteem by way of disassociation, and we are all alone, after all.
Fulfilment, at the top of the tier, seems to be something that is vital to the maintenance of any of the other tiers, even the biological. Why even live, after all, if you don’t want to?
I’m not trying to know holes in the hierarchy of needs....well, actually I am, but not to be malicious. It just doesn’t make sense to me, so I’m trying to rearrange the model until it does.
For me, and from this day forth, it shall no longer be known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but instead, Skookum’s Towers of Hanoi of needs, and no matter how long it takes, and how many times I have to start over.
I’ll solve it.
