Update: here’s a really great article on how Maslow misinterpreted the ideas he sold as his own.

Here is one of many articles explaining why it’s wrong.

People are using this hierarchy right now to justify all sorts of terrible behavior. No, they can’t help others or do good, they’re too busy taking care of their own needs in a crisis.

Only we live in a state of crisis. It’s a perpetual state marked by inequality, indifference and greed. Before people were hoarding toilet paper, they were paying colleges off to get their undeserving kids in and lining up on Black Friday to buy TVs to watch commercials in perfect clarity. They were doing anything they could to get a Baby Yoda doll for Christmas.

We wonder how we got Trump–this narcissistic failure of a human–but most Americans couldn’t tell you anything about the source of the goods they get. That their chocolate is harvested by child slaves. That their chicken is processed by undocumented workers. That their Amazon order is fulfilled by a traumatized worker trying to keep from living out of the backseat of a car.

It’s no coincidence that Silicon Valley and the biggest amassed homeless population are in the same place. It is mass indifference and the very American justification that your state of wealth is a direct reflection of your inherent value.

What we call convenience should really be called willful ignorance. It rises to the level of criminal negligence.

People have been using stress to justify a lot of ugly things. They use it to shut down, not help anyone else, and take part in these grotesque Roman arenas of death. They’ve been watching Friday night “who killed the white lady” specials. They’ve been tuning into Lifetime “who hurt the white lady” melodramas. They binged Tiger King. And they call it “self-care.”

Meanwhile, people around the country…people with degrees and access to newspapers…had no fucking clue what was about to go on in Wisconsin with the state primary. I’ve been reading about this–the problems set to befall the 2020 election for three years now. And not on some secret site behind a paywall. But on Twitter, from actual journalists.

People didn’t know about Wisconsin because they wanted to not know, and then when it was too late to do anything about it they bathed in the disillusionment that government doesn’t work.

They cross their arms, stick out their thin bottom lips, and pout. It’s so unfair. And yet they did nothing to prevent the unfairness and nothing to combat it as it happened. And I will bet you that they do nothing the next time and the time after that. When they are needed, they choose to do nothing.

You only get the choice to do nothing if you are privileged. And you only get to complain from the comfort of your home if you are safe.

Ok, so your lower needs in the hierarchy have been met. When do you start pitching in and helping everyone else? When do you start doing anything besides consuming and feeling impotent and crying out to your friends that the word is fucked? According to Maslow, it’s time.

But the hierarchy is wrong.

Before anything else, we need each other.

The winter before this one, a young woman died falling down some icy stairs in a subway station. She was trying to maneuver her child’s stroller.

I talked about it with some guys who helped me move my stuff into my apartment last year. They said people wanna help each other in NYC because if some guy throws himself in front of a train, everyone is late for work. They get it. They get this:

And if they get it, then why doesn’t everyone else? Because people see what they want to see and they create a narrative that suits them.

That is what I don’t get about these white, middle class, liberal arts educated Bernie supporters. They want change for the benefit of humanity but they have such distain for the actual people. They love people in theory…especially Native Americans. They want to go to the reservations and visit them. As if a reservation were a zoo. It disgusts me.

How many Americans were disappointed that Disney didn’t come out with Baby Yoda toy at Christmas? Fuck Baby Yoda. Fuck consumerism. And fuck entitlement.

My only problem is I’m watching Rome burn and I’m all out of fiddles.