Maslow's hierarchy

Figure 1. Maslow's Hierarchy of needs

Everyone is driven to do stuff by a need, however, some needs come before others. Maslow, an American psychologist from the early 1900s, suggested that there is a defined hierarchy (see Figure 1), where the most important needs at the bottom have to be fulfilled before a person moves to the next, stage above. For instance, if you are hungry you buy some food, if you are cold you need to get warm. Once these basic needs (in purple - Figure 1) are met, then people can move up towards psychological needs such as building relationships and esteem.

Maslow's Hierarchy and Earth Population

In essence, Maslow's hierarchy of needs emphasizes that basic human requirements must be fulfilled before addressing broader issues. With approximately 9.2% of the global population, equivalent to 719 million people, living in extreme poverty without access to essentials such as food, clean water, sanitation, health, shelter, and education, it seems impractical to expect a unified response to humanity's wider common problem the ecological crisis.

So the earth is doomed? It seems that humanity is reluctant to give up its old ways and many have been looking for a technoutopian solution come to save us. However, Jevons Paradox and Greenwashing seem to be stopping this from being effective on a mass scale.

It seems our best bet, is to change that which is in reach to ourselves. To act locally and then propagate this collectively across the world. By doin this we can effect change. However, to start doing this we need to be able to effectively change people's minds, to unlearn bad habits and learn new ones. The traditional way to do this is activism. To actively go out with signs and banners and petition police and politicians for change. It was once thought that only 3.5% of the populace was needed to become actively involved to make a change. However, with the failings of Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace and countless other organisation this seems like a far away goal.

The most effective means at our disposal to do this is is to induce pivotal mental states to help people unlearn logical fallacies, popular delusions, and cognitive biases and then refocus on new transparent systems that will eliminate green washing and corruption and hopefully get us out of this mess.

References