The missing apex of Maslow's hierarchy: self-transcendence

&gt; <i>Maslow felt we needed to transcend thoughts of ourselves as islands. We had to see ourselves as part of the broader universe to develop the common priorities that can allow humankind to survive as a species.</i><p>If you&#x27;d prefer the 19th century&#x27;s expression of this ideal to the 20th&#x27;s, see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Humboldtian_model_of_higher_education#Principles" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...</a>

Maslow&#x27;s hierarchy is irrelevant today; even 50 years ago (!) the research found it&#x27;s not a very good theory [1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;abs&#x2F;pii&#x2F;0030507376900386" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;abs&#x2F;pii&#x2F;003050...</a>

Maslow never described his needs hierarchically. The whole &quot;pyramid&quot; thing came from some consultants in the 1960s who misinterpreted Maslow&#x27;s writings.<p>Makes it hard to take this article seriously.

Worth reading for historical context on Maslow and his re-interpretation of an existing framing <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resilience.org&#x2F;stories&#x2F;2021-06-18&#x2F;the-blackfoot-wisdom-that-inspired-maslows-hierarchy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resilience.org&#x2F;stories&#x2F;2021-06-18&#x2F;the-blackfoot-...</a>

i have difficulty seeing the hierarchy. to me self transcendence is closely linked to belonging. i can&#x27;t have family, friends or a community unless i care about them and not only about myself.<p>moreso, caring about others is what creates that belonging in the first place.<p>so while basic needs are kind of a foundation, it seems that the other needs are more or less in parallel on top of that.<p>also, another thought is to look at needs not from an individual perspective, but from a community perspective.<p>once you have achived belonging, it is the belonging and the community that ensures your basic needs.<p>when i am homeless and hungry, i don&#x27;t automatically ignore the needs of my family and community in order to get food and shelter.<p>in fact losing family and community is part of what causes me to be homeless and hungry in the first place.<p>so i can&#x27;t have food, shelter and protection unless i transcend and care about my community, or, in reverse i care about family and community because they provide food and shelter

Don&#x27;t people transcend themselves at all levels of Maslow&#x27;s hierarchy? E.g. when starving people portion out food among themselves instead of hoarding it.

Kind of religion, just thousand of years later. Modernity runs in circles imo and loves to label old things in modern terms. Mankind cannot continue to sell itself to short term careers. Thankfully farmers (I think) and others that choose to live outside the grind are on the right path. We can pretend in the modern world that we don&#x27;t need anything with the soul or religion. But in the end we will find it.

The whole thing is best summed as &#x27;whatever you have, you will always want something else.&#x27; Even if you have self-actualization, which a psychotherapist in here say isn&#x27;t even really achieveable.<p>Ultimately you&#x27;ll realize that you want something that is impossible, like changing the immutable aspects of you (&#x27;transcendence&#x27;).<p>There is no real shift between self-actualization and transcendence. Just wanting more to be above your peers, from being at the top of the hill (self-actualization) to being at the top of the world, for all time (transcendence). It&#x27;s all still in the framework of competition.

Behold, the lightning is the ascendency of Man.<p>- Zarathustra

Maslow seems to have re-invented the Tripartite Soul[1].<p>Transcendence is what one obtains via the community of faith.<p>The materialists will reject this answer, yet fall short of offering an explanation for life beside &quot;bag of electric meat&quot;.<p>The idea that existence must fall entirely within the scope of human existenceis the bugaboo.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.classicalstuff.net&#x2F;episodes-1&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;31&#x2F;episode-1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.classicalstuff.net&#x2F;episodes-1&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;31&#x2F;episode...</a>

It was never a hierarchy though, that was someone later who misrepresented his work and that version was popularized.

&gt; <i>At the end, she came away convinced that the most serious problems facing humanity aren’t technical: Although engineering our way out of trouble is possible, it can’t happen until we transcend ourselves, seeing beyond our own individual well-being to the needs of us all.</i><p>Hasn&#x27;t this been obvious and practiced in various ways by many&#x2F;most people, for millennia?<p>Are they talking about something different?

I too want to ascend like Daniel Jackson.

It isn&#x27;t possible to exist as an ego without some form of spiritual belief. Existing as some sort of &#x27;happy&#x27; ego, insofar as that is possible, requires that to be developed. Even if it is as simple as we float along responding to instincts - sometimes we have to make choices about what instincts to enable and to make such a decision we need faith-based assumptions.<p>If a model like Maslow&#x27;s hierarchy is useful, it is reasonable to add in a spiritual layer. However, anything related to faith is automatically controversial.<p>---<p>This comment does not assume an organised religion is involved.

The old Maslow’s pyramid fantasy<p>I was a practising psychotherapist for over 25 years.<p>Never once have I seen a Self-Actualized person.<p>Self-Actualization is a goal that can never be achieved.<p>Having met our basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid, having worked on our emotional needs in its middle and worked at achieving our potential.<p>That statement does not represent any sample of human beings currently living on earth.