I haven't thought about
Maslow's hierarchy in a while. Not since highschool social science and business classes anyway. I guess that's why it was kind of a..I won't say shocker or surprise...it's more of a...pleasant rediscovery of old knowledge applied to current circumstances, to hear that while environmentalists and ecologists believe that the economy is dependent on a thriving ecology (and I'm not saying that it isn't), the same can be said of the opposite. I'm reading
Break Through by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, and at the beginning, taking the idea of Maslow's hierarchy, they explain that because a booming economy meant that the concerns of the majority were no longer focused on basic needs and necessities like food, shelter and clothing, they were able to concentrate most of their attention on upper pyramid concerns like esteem and quality of life, including the idea of earthly stewardship.
Thus, if the economy is doing poorly, the concerns of the majority will revert back to basics, and while there will still be a concern for the environment, it becomes buried under more pressing matters.
Thus, the question then becomes how we should balance these two so that the economy does well without sacrificing the well-being of our earth, because we all know that tipping the scale in favour of either one is devastating.
