Part I

My good friend Joel brought up an interesting discussion the other day. This will be part one of the discussion, and one must understand that text on this topic simply will not get the job done, but it is something to think about. The discussion centered around Maslow's heirarchy of needs, and poverty in America. The contention or observation posed was that the need for social acceptance has moved higher up in the heirarchy than most of what is found in the esteem grouping of the pyramid, and in some cases, albeit indirectly, above some of the basic fundamental needs for survival. This may be too strong an assertion. But certainly it could be argued that the need for social acceptance has far exceeded the need of accepting personal responsibility. I did say need, because accepting personal responsibility is in large part what allows us to function as humans, and not as other animals, thereby categorizing it as need. I realize this is somewhat of a simplistic view, but for this purpose, I will leave off discussion of all the many facets of our characters that make us decidingly human. Furthermore, many of these other facets have their roots in accepting personal responsibility.


An Aside: I get very suspicious when anyone starts to instruct or educate me on "the poor in America". Certainly cases of abject poverty exist and a true humanitarian effort is needed ( i.e. personal responsibility by someone or some group) to assist these cases. The point is, that America has the richest poor people in the world. 1/3 of the *poor* population is obese. Obesity and poverty are two conditions that absolutely cannot be reconciled with each other.

Back to the topic,
Why do people feel it necessary to spend way beyond their means in order to obtain some sort of "social acceptance"? A quick example is the family that "can't afford" health insurance, but has a family cell phone plan and a 35 thousand dollar Tahoe. Don't tell me it doesn't exist or is very isolated....I see it everyday. This is just a broad example of what the discussion centered around. How did we get to that point? Who is to blame? Why does this seem to be prevalent more among a low socioeconomic status of people? Is it really more prevalent among a low socioeconomic status of people? More to follow on this discussion, as I think it is a good one.

--Steak