‘Does the hierarchy of needs’ need revisiting?

It’s not actually correct, as good a visual joke as it is.
Rough sleepers and homeless people especially women generally do have a prepaid mobile phone, and shelters try to give access to power for chargers. It’s a basic safety precaution; if I were living in the streets I’d want some way to be contacted and make calls, far before secure shelter.

You think it’s a really good joke Liam?

Eh. I’ve just seen the Hierarchy of Needs a bit too often not to smirk when someone takes the piss.

I don’t have a mobile phone, have never had a mobile phone and nor do lots of people with jobs, homes, kids. So the idea that homeless people generally have pre-paid mobile phones is a huge assumption grounded in projection and wishful thinking.

They left out tatts and piercings.

I’ve still not seen Maslow’s hierarchy enough times to desensitise me to the woeful list-grammar.

Sally @3

In the admittedly limited contact that I have had with homeless people through my work in the community sector, from what I have experienced it would seem that to assume that homeless people not having mobile phones would actually be ‘a huge assumption grounded in projection and wishful thinking.’ Though I would be interested in hearing from someone with more contact with this community.

Ditto for the rest of the community. Whilst you might not have a mobile phone there were more mobile phones than people in Australia in 2007. Four years later, we can only assume a higher penetration rate, given the nature of technology uptake in Aus.

Perhaps you should test your own assumptions before casting aspersions on others.

I too have certainly very limited contact with the homeless, but even within that very limited contact I do know some with mobile phones, at least from time to time. More to the point I am not certain that I know any persistently without.

But Sally’s experience is perhaps of a different world?

I wonder what would constitute a Hierarchy of Needs of the polity? It seems that people dislike their governments everywhere about the same, but some governments do very well at providing civic amenity, and other governments (like where I’m living now) don’t understand how to erect lamp-posts.

I propose that people expect certain amenities from the government, and once these are provided expect things further up the hierarchy. People complain about swollen gutters, not the lack of Christmas decoration on main street.

If the polity’s preferences do take this form, then Austerity should be easy.

There are now eight needs:

1.Physiological needs
2.Safety needs
3.Social belonging needs
4.Esteem needs
5.Cognitive needs — knowledge, curiosity, understanding, self-awareness
6.Aesthetic needs — beauty, sensory stimulation, balance
7.Self-actualisation needs
8.Transcendence needs — helping others to achieve self-actualisation, spiritual and global concerns

http://careersintheory.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/classics-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/

and some clever fun interpretations; particularly the Hierarchy of hats.