I’m not an expert in psychology or anything so I’m just speculating wildly here, but that’s what I do most of the time and hope that some of the shit I fling will stick to the proverbial wall.
I was having lunch today at KFC when I had this thought, and you will understand the irony of that in a moment.
It has to do with Maslow’s Pyramid. (Which Maslow never called a pyramid, btw – it just graphs best that way.) What Maslow’s Pyramid says, basically, is that you have to take care of the basic needs first. If you are starving, you’re first instinct is to find food.
The Path to Enlightenment
So, I started thinking, you’ve got to be able to break this down, because everything breaks down, and so I tried breaking it down according to our basic needs, and seeing where they fit in further up the pyramid. Food is the most basic need. Food and water. If
you don’t have those, you’ll die. Well, I’m guessing human beings got pretty tired of raw animal meat and cold vegetables as soon as they discovered fire, which was probably about a million or two years ago. Even if it was enough to keep them alive. Fire meant cooked food and agriculture led to beer and wine, a couple of thousand decades later. Food had moved a notch up the pyramid. Once it was widely available, without risking getting killed by a woolly mammoth, people started to experiment with recipes and food became a social thing as well, and a family thing. We’re up to stage 3. With the potlatch cultures and the development of empires, as Roman emperors dined on figs from Palestine and grapes from France, food moves up to the “self-esteem” (showing off) level.
Now we’re at the top of the pyramid. Just eating is not enough any more. The point, if you wish to live a fulfilling life in the 21st century, is to appreciate the art of eating well.
Ditto with housing (which is listed as sleep in the pyramid). In the beginning, a sheltered space in the forest, or a cave without any bears in it, was probably enough. At any rate, it led to the survival of the species or we wouldn’t be here. Then, tents made out of animal skins. Then, houses of mud and straw, and wood and bricks, and up the ladder it moved. For centuries, large mansions have been the ultimate status symbol, the top of the heap, but now the cool thing is to refurbish an old light house or recycle an airplane fuselage, and they have whole reality TV shows dedicated to that kind of thing.
From necessity, through comfort, we move up the ladder to art. It’s the same in every field. How could it be otherwise?
(these are probably not original thoughts at all, but they are original to me and that’s why I share them here)
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