Would Einstein have read The 4 Hour Body? Are we stuck on Maslow’s Pyramid?
Do you think Einstein cared about six pack abs? Or for the folks coming from Hacker News. Would Einstein have even glanced at his Karma?
“I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
-Steve Jobs
I was ruminating over some Steve Jobs stuff while reading his biography. As I was thinking about this quote, I started thinking about humanity. Thought a little about the Greek tragedies and Shakespeare I’ve read.
Then Maslow’s hierarchy popped in my head.
Maslow believed that your motivations moved up a pyramid. You can’t be truly motivated by your need for love until you fulfill basic physiological needs first and then safety.
This is why companies with layoffs have such a hard time getting better. Their employees become scared of their next round of layoffs that loom. Employees who are worried about their job safety can’t be truly motivated by social needs and work well in teams. They just have other stuff on their minds.
Maslow was famous for studying people who he felt were the healthiest and wisest of our population. Instead of people with mental illnesses. He focused on the likes of Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. People who he felt had achieved “self-actualization”, where all the other base needs have been satisfied.
You can argue that Maslow was wrong, and plenty of people have. But Maslow’s hierarchy rings true for many folks and is widely taught.
So I started thinking about where I am on this pyramid.
I’d love to think I’m getting somewhere towards to the top of course.
But then I think about some of the motivations I have for reading The 4 Hour Body. Or glancing at things like my “score” on Hacker News.
The 4 Hour Body and Hacker News are both excellent resources and have many many fans. I’m not putting them down in the slightest. What I am doing though is recognizing that the way I use those resources, which I believe is a pretty common way, might interfere with me advancing further to better places of motivation.
I bet that the majority of people reading The 4 Hour Body are reading to satisfy a need for Self-Esteem. I know there’s other folks reading that book who need to satisfy an even more base need of getting healthier. But I bet a bunch of very enlightened and already healthy folks are reading that book thinking about things like “it would be neat to have six pack abs”. :) Right?
I also see the effort Tim is putting out there to help folks short circuit the frustration and time wasted dieting and working out in order to achieve a level of health. But then I see a ton of people just swing to another extreme and spend countless hours figuring out the right foods to eat to avoid carbohydrates, the right pills or supplements to take, the right scale to use to measure body fat daily, etc. so they can get to their six pack ab needs.
Or I look at my karma in Hacker News. What purpose do I have for looking at that? Is it ever anything more than to increase my self-esteem? It’s a game mechanic after all, to know that I have achieved something. Achievement. That’s right there on the Self-Esteem level of the pyramid.
So if you have six pack abs on your mind, or are hoping your next article gets ton’s of Karma. Or whatever it is the next achievement you have in your mind is…
Are you handicapping your ability to reach your true creative potential? Will you be able to reach a level of problem solving that fulfills you? Or be able to truly step outside your prejudices?
I’d love to hear how you guys feel you are stuck or are conquering that Self-Esteem level. Is it even a problem for you? Is Maslow full of shit? Or do you think you struggle with realizing greater potential because six pack abs sounds so damn fun?
