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Trump’s Hierarchy of Needs


Abraham Maslow, in his Theory of Human Motivation, presented a hierarchy of needs. In there he drew a pyramid divided into five levels of ascending importance. At the very top—the apex of the pyramid—he had the need for self-actualization and transcendence. That, he said, was the last and ultimate human need. 

To the western world, the revelation was nothing short of what Archimedes found in his bathtub and thereafter ran out naked yelling, “Eureka, Eureka”.  That precisely is the reason that a paper written in 1943 is considered relevant and by and large cannot brook any challenge.




I mean a lot more profound versions vis-a-vis this hierarchy of needs were figured out and propounded by hundreds of our thinkers since 3000BCE. But then, west is west. It reinvents, rediscovers, and repackages what is by then common knowledge in India. And gets it patented too. 

For now, however, let’s go with this Maslow pyramid. 

One would expect that a man who is the President of the United States—the most powerful nation in the world—would have reached the top tier, i.e. self-actualisation. This Maslow guy couldn’t think of Nirvana and Moksha of course, limited as he was in his readings. Then there were limited experiences of life too. He seemingly said that the actualisation is when the man realises his potential and gets creative. All very positive. 

However, if Donald Trump realises his full potential by taking creativity to an extreme where he derides and negates everything that the recent election threw up in spite of what the rest of the humanity thinks, I suggest it is creative with a capital ‘C’. He knows he has to go, but his self-actualisation is from getting as troublesome to Joe Biden as possible. 

It is disruption of conventional thinking. Now, Disruption is something that is being touted as a desirable way going forward. Call him a vengeful man. Go ahead, but the idea of systematically defeating every ounce of an adversary's being, is self-actualisation. Eat your heart out, Abraham Maslow; the pyramid you made is pretty much juvenile. 

Says Josh ‘Livestock’ Boruff, “The answer is incredibly simple. It's a matter of choice. It's a matter of weighing the pros and cons and realizing things are simply better if you're vengeful. Vengeance is a lot more than just harming people. It's about empowerment, which is something everybody can appreciate. Plus, the morale boost from defeating an enemy in some form or another is great for self-esteem. Yes, vengeance does a lot of good for a man's spirit.”

 

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