Speaking of things just now crossing my desk, last night I declared a day of jubilee on my (personal) email, which involved deleting a lot of good email newsletters that I had every intention of reading. That left the really good email newsletters, which I either read or snoozed until this morning. This resulted in an issue of Monomythical from September floating to the top.
Knowledge work regards us from high upon Maslow’s hierarchy over the crook of its bespectacled nose; it’s easy to miss right now, in light of more pressing basic needs (food, income, where to live, daily mood). But the volume and quality of our creative output has undeniably declined this year: a warning that, left unchecked, could lead to civilizational backslide…
We’ve constructed fragile, tattered lean-to’s of surrogate activities to distract ourselves from the raging destruction outside, but if we continue to stay here, there will be nothing left to come back to.
A little dramatic, but I’ve been thinking about the same thing:
I’ve been thinking about safety lately, specifically the lack of it. There it sits, right towards the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as a “basic need”. Based on Maslow’s theory, we aren’t motivated to do things higher in the hierarchy until a lower stage is “satisfied within the individual”.
So if you find yourself struggling to be creative, or work out, or develop a healthy habit, or read…if you just want to watch old movies and eat cookies…maybe it’s not all on you.