02-11-11

Maslow Was Wrong Part 1: Bacon Theory

I’ve been spending a lot of time with dead guys lately. I almost enjoy their company more than the live ones at the moment. I’ve been playing over Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in my head and things are just not adding up. Then I figured it out: Bacon!

Bacon trumps safety. Let me explain via this amazing little graphic here:

At it’s basic form, the theory states that before you can move up a level, the needs below must be met (unless you are a metamotive), but this had me thinking about safety. The basic principles of motivation is that as humans, we actively seek out pleasure (stimulus fulfilling need) and actively avoid pain (stimulus threatening need).

Hence the problem with safety: I will run across the highway before stopping to bite into that juicy hamburger in my hand (unless it had bacon, hence the name). That negates it. My safety concern for my body superseded my concern for not dying of starvation. This displays a possible hierarchy of functional concerns as well, but that is for another time. (I’ll call that one the “Eggs Theory”…which comes first: caloric or procreative concerns?) I get it, perhaps he was trying to adopt a Hobbian “we’re concerned with society and our role in society due to safety/nasty-brutish-short reasons” but that still wouldn’t be a need, it’s an effect of a cognitive response.

Safety is bypassing a threat to an already existing need. Safety concerns should fall somewhere in the plane of its corresponding need (safety of health would be at the functional level for example). More complex safeties like “safety of employment” would fall under the level of its more basic constructs like security of food, clothing, home or security to provide the basic functional needs for our families or security of our “super pimp in our mad corner office” status (aka. self-esteem).