Can We Have A Toughtful/Respectful Discussion Of Civil Rights Versus Income Inequality ???

[TM99]

40. I know he is no longer popular

and I doubt few have even read his works, but Abraham Maslow showed the truth of economic before social justice in his book Motivation and Personality.

So as not to bore those not into psychology like I am, I will summarize it quickly.

Basically, Maslow studied highly functioning and even genius types to see how they were able to accomplish what they were and are accomplishing.

From this he devised his now famous 'hierarchy of needs'.

The very two bottom rungs on this ladder are physiological needs and safety. We all must have adequate food and shelter from the elements. We must have a basic level of health and physical well-being. We can not focus on anything else unless those needs are met. The next level is safety. One aspect is safety from harm - be it war, weather related, violence to our person with in a family or via crime, etc. But the other aspect that rarely is talked about that he focused a lot of attention on was economic safety. We must have economic security. We must have the ability to save and secure our future retirement. We must have a safety net against a devastating illness or accident.

These two basic needs must be met before we can worry about love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. So much of today's social justice is about these later needs with a complete ignoring of the former. A poor person - black or white, man or woman, gay or straight, etc. - does not have time to care about privilege theories, micro-aggressions, gender politics, etc. Those are important once the other needs are met. I don't discount them out of hand. I discount them as issues that no one who has ever faced true poverty would attempt to argue as being more important.

The New Deal and the Great Society spoke exactly to this hierarchy of needs. It began to address each and every level and recognized that without the lower needs being satisfied there was little to no hope of the higher ones being realized.

So my training, my professional experience, my personal experience have all taught me that this is true. Without jobs and job security, without food, clothing, and adequate housing, without health care (not fucking health insurance but actual health care), without social security & medicare for our old, without this basic economic security, civil rights as described today by social justice has no foundation upon which to build for we, the people. First economics, then civil rights. They are intertwined but must be done in an order that acknowledges what is real about life and living.