Sherri Malouf wrote:
> Here's my point -- everyone jumped onto Maslow's theory because we driven
> human beings needed to know there is a process by which we will eventually
> reach godhood -- and coincidentally and luckily for us -- it was linear!!!
> YIPPEEE!!!
>
> We are too complex to simply be represented by his model. That's not to
> say the concept isn't attractive. WE ALL WANT GROWTH. We all want ease
> in our lives. We all want to be able to stop and smell the roses in our
> most high stress moments. There is no easy way to define human
> motivation. There is no magical button that gets pushed and turns us into
> self actualized creatures.
>
> In summary -- why are you folks all so stuck on curing a model that has
> been disproven and that I am told the author has said isn't valid?
Well, said, Sherri. I'm sure I don't know the answer to your question.
But I can answer for myself, when I say that I don't unconditionally
accept any theory or model, including models that disprove other models,
as any more than what they all represent to me. They simply represent a
view (slice, piece, thread, pattern, etc) of ourselves (and our world) as
experienced by the human race. Maslow's idea was pretty neat. It opened
our eyes to new ideas and even created enough excitement that David
McClelland found himself disproving it.
Sherri, I think your point is very similar to the one that Alfie Kohn
makes about pop behavioralists still relying on Skinner's view of reality.
I think that what we see, throughout human history, is that ideas (once
accepted) don't give up easily to opposing world-views. That's what makes
truth so slippery. The ideas of Aristotle and Plato influenced the
western world for thousands of years. Many of those ideas have been
refuted innumerable times. Modern physics, especially quantum physics,
has been busy debunking Newtonian concepts for almost a hundred years.
But Newtonian physics is still represents the truth to most of the rest of
the non-scientific world.
When I suggested that a problem with Maslow's theory was that it was
linear, I was engaging in the dialectic process of synthesizing something
new (for me) from the preceding dialog. What was more important to me
from that dialog was the reflecting on my presence in the many dimensions
of my self. My model changed during that process. Now, I'm still working
on evolution (hummm, some of that might be accurate); Learning
organizations (they do smack of neo-platonism, just a little) and
everything else that crosses my skeptical path. It's nice knowing you
might be out there too--thanks for challenging the status quo!
Doc
-- Richard C. "Doc" Holloway, Thresholds--Human Development and Networking P.O. Box 2361, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 786-0925 Fax: (360) 709-4361 mailto:olypolys@nwrain.com"The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire."
-Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>