Everyone in
the psychology business knows about Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) and his
five-tier Hierarchy of Needs. In
Maslow’s triangle of five there were the basic first and second, Physiological
and Safety needs, followed by the psychological third and fourth, Love and
Esteem needs, capped with the last and fifth self-fulfillment need of
Self-Actualization.
Maslow later
modified his motivational theory to an eight tier pyramid. At the base of the triangle and working
upward, he kept the Physiological Needs (food and shelter), kept the need of Safety
(law and order), kept Love (relationships and affection), kept Esteem
(confidence and swagger), then added Cognitive needs (knowledge and meaning), added
Aesthetic needs (beauty and balance), of course kept Self-Actualization
(personal growth and self-fulfillment), and at the apex added the last and
eighth need, TRANSCENDENCE (helping others to self-actualize).
Transcendence
most agree, means one’s life journey has been fulfilled and then that empirical
wisdom shared with others.
Transcendence, I’m guessing, is a sharing most selfless.
Now applying
Maslow’s hierarchy to busking, I’ll specifically describe my journey as a busker. (And I must confess that I HATE the journey metaphor but … it does seem
verily cemented into our erudite group think lingo.)
I began as a
guitar busker, graduated to the didge, and now I’m doing portrait
sketching. As far as my busking I’ve
morphed to self-actualization, though have not yet transcended. (I’m not yet helping others self-actualize.)
I shall
explain my busker alterities.
Guitar
busking. Lots of people refer to guitar
buskers as just another beggar with a guitar.
Though I’ve always fancied myself as the quintessential Bobby Dylan
wannabee busker, I do acknowledge that this beggar notion of such buskers doth
oft prevail.
But so what
-- I love guitar busking. Guitar busking
for me has become a perfunctory love. I
can thrum and visit and visit and thrum.
I can skip a beat or keep a beat and keep on chatting with my
consumers.
More importantly,
I think I represent the stereotype a-stranger-comes-to-town drifter. And I love my delusional thinking that
everyone regards me with some romantic notion, that I represent fun and freedom
and all Americana things in between.
Even if I am
a beggar with a guitar, my guitar gives me swagger.
Didgeridoo busking. Even though the didgeridoo is an Aussie
construct, whenever I’m in the presence of a didge busker I get a cerebral
connotation. To me, didge buskers look
like thinkers; in fact, impress as Eastern thinker personas. It could be the colorful costumes; it could
be the earthy drones; it could be the combination of both. The mystique of the didgeridoo seems somewhat
eerie, yet ever soothing. Doo’ers always
take me philosophically adrift, complete with erotic thoughts on exotic shores. To me, a didge busker is a cultivated busker.
Portrait
busking. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but MY
PENCIL NEVER LIES. My 15 minute scribbles
of graphic depict not only physical traits, but reveal also the psychological
traits of my character clients. As my
other forms of busking, I am ever delusional, thinking that projective psychology
is always in play. Not-so-strangely,
projective psychology makes the portrait busking magical.
And so to
summarize my busking personas, guitar busking projects my AMERICANA self, didge
busking projects my CEREBRAL self, and portrait busking projects my MAGIC self.
‘Tis true,
‘tis true that one cannot philosophize on an empty stomach. But once our stomachs are filled and we’ve
met our deficiency needs moving up Maslow’s triangle, including even
Transcendence, then our philosophical chit chat is ripe for … EXISTENTIAL DREAD.
Existential
dread is the trauma of non-being. Non-being is not being here anymore. Knowing that we will die prompts the
existential dread … the purpose or non-purpose of life. For those of us experiencing existential
dread, the point of our lives is meaningless until some subjective meaning is
contrived and attached.
Jean-Paul
Sartre (1905-1980) said that when refusing to face up to being non-being (pun
intended), a person is acting in bad faith.
Persons who refuse to acknowledge their non-being selves are living out
lives that are unauthentic and unfulfilling; whereas, persons who face up to
their non-being can be rewarded with a sense of calm and freedom.
But Sigmund
Freud (1856-1939) had stated that most people do not want
freedom, because freedom involves
responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
We are the big-brained species on the planet. We believe we are center of the
universe. We create our realities. We contrive a meaning to how our world flows
for us. We believe we own our world and
our world destiny. We believe that each
of us is unique and have free will.
Now back to Freud.
Though we generally know all of this to be
true, Freud believed we do not really want free will because we do not really
want responsibility. It’s complicated
but makes perfect sense to me.
Now back to
Maslow.
Existential
Dread is disturbing and so people tend to avoid that type of thinking, never
mind that dread is not a motivator for moving upward on Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs triangle. Accordingly, I am
thinking for the Existentialist crush, the constructs on Maslow’s triangle
would, for the most part, be unauthentic.
Moral codes and values, customs and habits, religions and traditions,
are just simply crafted and populist coping methods for existential dread. Everything Maslow mentions as motivators
could simply represent the delusional driving forces constructed by those refusing
to acknowledge their non-being futures; all of this being from the
existentialist point of non-being, of course. And then, if existential dread did take a position in Maslow's pyramid, it would surely have to be a the top. Ironically then, a person intellectually rising to such height would have the introspect to realize that all the needs listed below would be constructions for naught, and what mattered most were only the biological and physiological needs at the base. Those persons ascending to the top of Maslow's pyramid of needs, essentially, would find their life meaning by climbing to re-discover the bottom.
If Maslow was
to revise his Hierarchy of Needs yet again, surely Existential Dread he
would publish atop his 9-tier pyramid.
NOT!
Marching in
my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:
Interesting. I moved some files the other day and HAMID KARZAI, former president of Afghanistan, appeared. I had drawn him for a biography a friend of my son's was writing.
My best friend, COLBY WILLIAMS gets boarded in his NHL debut last night!
Awesome huh! He's livin' the dream and lovin' it!
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