Ideologies vs Needs

[Fatalysm]

It's 2:24am for me right now and as my caffeinated mind was whirring I started pondering a question about the way we live.

It started off as "Do poverty stricken people really care about modern ideologies". Then I went searching for different models of needs and remembered Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

I was trying to answer my question honestly, with research, and the answer I came too was that there was not room for at least certain ideologies in a box like Phsiological needs.

In my mind, this is where things get into some seriously murky and uncomfortable territory. Immediately my mind went to religion, politics, gender-identity and feminism.

Some people are going to label those things as a need to reach self-actualization and some people may not. Some will offer them a higher or lower position or perhaps make it all encompassing.

It's at this point I started to consider that some might consider religious belief to be an all-encompassing need.

Some might argue that gender identity lives in love and belonging. Others may argue that your need for gender identity lives lower.

There's also this annoying thought in my head, that I wish I could just plug ideologies into one of the segments as a need or even as its own segment.

At this stage I started looking at other models. I quite like Alderfers ERG model which adds on from Maslow's. Stating that you can feel needs from different levels simultaneously, which in my mind feels more correct and a little less rigid.

My thoughts here were that your needs as a person shift alongside your culture, ideas and opinions. Yes there will always be existence, relatedness and growth needs, but they can all be wrapped in ideology.

What I'm trying to avoid by this stage is going too big or vague on ideology because I think at some point you have to accept that "a system of ideas and ideals" is literally everything we've been born into and what I think we kind of have to focus on is the primary needs outside of those ideologies until you get somewhere murky again.

I think my conclusion is that different ideologies may fit into the needs hierarchy somewhere but there is no one size fits all model but these are close.

I worry that, despite it perhaps being an unpopular opinion, things like politics, gender-identity, religion are wants and not needs. Where they present as needs for some, that isn't reality for others.

That doesn't mean I think they are useless to us, but does make me question the importance of some ideologies and the value we place on them to the needs we have as people.

Do you think ideology is a need? Are smaller ideologies needs or belong in these hierarchies? Are we placing too much/not enough value in things that are or aren't needs.

Honestly, I wasn't even sure If this is a debate topic, but my brain was so perplexed this morning and I had hours to kill.

Had to edit it in, it also hasn't escaped my brain that these hierarchy models are ideologies about needs. Which is a whole new layer of the matrix I'm not ready for. I'm also aware that they are widely used in people management within businesses.

Edited February 12 by Fatalysm