#maslow

Anon, have you heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?

Needs must be met in order: physiological needs, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, and each level depends on the foundation of the level beneath it.

You can't have self-actualization without esteem, can't have esteem without belonging, can't have belonging without safety, and you can't have safety until physiological needs are met.

Now imagine a pyramid of problems Palestinians must face in order to create a state.

Whether or not such a state would be genuinely free is at the top of the pyramid. Your concern (while wholly valid) is wildly premature.

At the bottom of the pyramid (the foundation everything else rests on) is the most basic question: does a critical mass of Palestinian political culture actually want a state at peace with Israel, or will it stick with maximalism and eliminationism, demanding that Israel cease to exist? Until that's resolved, nothing above it is stable.

One tier up: Does that same political culture want a secular, pluralist state, or an Islamist one? You can want peace with Israel and still want a theocracy. I'd argue that not every Islamic theocracy is Islamist. You can want a democracy and still harbor eliminationist positions about your neighbor. So...these decisions have to be made and popularly embraced before a state can be planned.

Above that: Unified, competent, honest leadership. The Palestinian national movement is currently split between a corrupt, sclerotic PA that controls parts of the West Bank without popular support and a corrupt designated terrorist organization that controls Gaza and started the war that leveled it, actively seeking maximum death and destruction of Gaza's people and property.

A state requires a government which is capable of governing, controls corruption, and can gain the trust of at least a plurality of the people.

There isn't anything like that at the moment (and hasn't really ever been) - and such things are rarely built quickly.

Above that: Territorial continuity. Gaza and the West Bank don't share a border. Can a state in two non-contiguous pieces really be a state? Assume Israel agrees to land swaps to bridge the two with a corridor: how is that done with security for all involved?

Above that: Institutional capacity. Courts. Tax collection. Civil service. A currency or monetary framework. An economy not dependent on aid. The boring infrastructure of actually governing.

And at the top (tier six) is whether the state would be genuinely free.

The question of whether a Palestinian state would be genuinely free is worth asking - but it's tier six.

SEAN MUNDY / OFFERING / 2021

* * * *

“But the greatest human problems are not social problems, but decisions that the individual has to make alone. The most important feelings of which man is capable of emphasize his separateness from other people, not his kinship with them. The feelings of a mountaineer towards a mountain emphasize his kinship with the mountain rather than with the rest of mankind. The same goes for the leap of the heart experienced by a sailor when he smells the sea, or for the astronomer’s feeling about the stars, or for the archaeologist’s love of the past.

My feeling of love for my fellowmen makes me aware of my humanness, but my feeling about a mountain gives me an oddly nonhuman sensation. It would be incorrect, perhaps, to call it ‘superhuman’; but it nevertheless gives me a sense of transcending my everyday humanity. Maslow’s importance is that he has placed these experiences of ‘transcendence’ at the centre of his psychology. He sees them as the compass by which man gains a sense of the magnetic north of his existence. They bring a glimpse of ‘the source of power, meaning and purpose’ inside himself. This can be seen with great clarity in the matter of the cure of alcoholics. Alcoholism arises from what I have called ‘generalised hypertension’, a feeling of strain or anxiety about practically everything. It might be described as a ‘passively negative’ attitude towards existence. The negativity prevents proper relaxation; there is a perpetual excess of adrenalin in the bloodstream. Alcohol may produce the necessary relaxation, switch off the anxiety, allow one to feel like a real human being instead of a bundle of over-tense nerves. Recurrence of hypertension makes the alcoholic remedy a habit, but the disadvantages soon begin to outweigh the advantage: hangovers, headaches, fatigue, guilt, general inefficiency. And, above all, passivity.

The alcoholics are given mescalin or LSD, and then peak experiences are induced by means of music or poetry or colours blending on a screen. They are suddenly gripped and shaken by a sense of meaning, of just how incredibly interesting life can be for the undefeated. They also become aware of the vicious circle involved in alcoholism: misery and passivity leading to a general running-down of the vital powers, and to the lower levels of perception that are the outcome of fatigue. ‘The spirit world shuts not its gates, Your heart is dead, your senses sleep,’ says the Earth Spirit to Faust. And the senses sleep when there is not enough energy to run them efficiently. On the other hand, when the level of will and determination is high, the senses wake up. (Maslow was not particularly literary, or he might have been amused to think that Faust is suffering from exactly the same problem as the girl in the chewing gum factory (described earlier), and that he had, incidentally, solved a problem that had troubled European culture for nearly two centuries).

Peak experiences are a by-product of this higher energy-drive. The alcoholic drinks because he is seeking peak experiences; (the same, of course, goes for all addicts, whether of drugs or tobacco.) In fact, he is moving away from them, like a lost traveler walking away from the inn in which he hopes to spend the night. The moment he sees with clarity what he needs to do to regain the peak experience, he does an about-face and ceases to be an alcoholic.”

—Colin Wilson, New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Psicólogo

When someone speaks or posts, without even trying we know who they’re listening to. Where they get their information from.

The perspectives and biases (left, right, or whatever) that are baked into their information sources become obvious from their assumptions. From how they understand what other people are saying and doing.

It’s easy to spot the limits that a given set of perspectives and biases puts on someone else’s thinking. How it hobbles their understanding of things.

Especially when their perspectives and biases are different from ours.

Truth be told, you and I are just like them. Our preferred perspectives and biases aren’t better than everyone else’s.

Our preferred perspectives and biases just create a different set of limits on our understanding of things. Limits that we think of as normal. Or healthy. Or right.

Because they’re ours.

What’s missing from all of it? The big picture.

Oh sure, we’ve all got pieces and parts of the real thing. But that’s all we’ve got.

It’s a natural weakness of human thought. We like to make things simple. Even if they really aren’t.

We’ll focus on one aspect or one idea that makes sense to us. And then try to use that one thing to make sense of everything.

Whether it works or not.

Think of Maslow’s classic line - “if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

When you put it that way, the problems caused by using one aspect or one idea to understand everything, the problems caused by “hammerism,” are obvious.

It’s exactly what John the Baptist is talking about in the Gospel. When he points out the limits of earthly thinking. The limits of hammerism.

No matter how easy or comfortable it may be for us, in the end, hammerism will always fail us. Leaving us unable to connect with others. Setting us up to be blindsided by life. Because it’s only part of the picture.

What’s the alternative to hammerism?

God’s perspective. The big picture itself.

Our default mode? Limiting ourselves to the easy and the comfortable.

God’s default mode? Sending the Holy Spirit to teach us everything. In its fullness.

So that we can connect with others, no matter how different they may seem to us.

So that we won’t be blindsided by life.

So that we can understand the big picture.

As the Gospel puts it, “God does not ration the gift of the Spirit.”

If we’re done with hammerism. If we’re done playing. God is waiting and wanting to give us the big picture.

The best place to start?

By putting down our hammers. And with a quiet heart, offering up the prayer of Samuel – “speak Lord, your servant is listening.”