Self-Help in the Age of Desperation

I have long contemplated the meaning of Maslow’s Pyramid as it applies to self help. Maslow’s Pyramid of needs has the basics at the bottom of the pyramid. The basics are things like food, shelter, and safety. The top of the pyramid is self actualization. However, according to Maslow you need the basics before you can reach self actualization. However, it is also worth noting that the famous psychologist, Victor Frankl, developed his logotherapy for people going through desperate times while interned in a concentration camp. In midst of and experiencing the worst horrors of man’s inhumanity to man he found ways of coping and surviving and even putting his higher mind to use to help the rest of humanity with their struggles. So I wonder if Maslow had it right. But I think back on a fictional universe that of Star Trek. In the movie “Search for Spock” Kirk is faced with a catch 22 situation. The Enterprise is crippled and Klingons are ready to destroy it or take them prisoner. In addition to the danger for his crew he faces the Klingons getting the Gensis technology enabling them to destroy whole planets. This is a situation much like what in the Star Fleet Academy Kobyash Maru (sp?) test of an impossible situation in the mock starship deck is given not as a situation that has a solution but rather as a test of the crew and captain’s character and ability to keep their head in such a situation. So when the Klingons on the surface of the Genesis planet murder Kirk’s son, Kirk allows himself just a few seconds to grieve, almost in tears, over his son’s loss. Then he does what he has to do given the moment and sets the Enterprise for self destruct and beams the crew down to the planet. Immediately upon materializing on the planet Kirk and his crew look up at the sky to see the wreckage of the Enterprise burning up in the planet’s atmosphere. Kirk again allows himself just a moment of self doubt. He asked Dr. McCoy, “My God Bones, what have I done?” To which Dr. McCoy replies, “You did what you always do. You took death and made it into a fighting chance to live.” So these are examples of people dealing with life threatening situations and not allowing the stress to take over and keep them from dealing with the reality presented. However, the stress of the Star Trek universe is very different than that of the starving mother and child in Sub-Saharan Africa. The stress for Star Trek characters is temporary not the kind the African mother experience that can last for years or even a lifetime of soul crushing hunger and fear. So it is different. I still believe Maslow had a point. Yet this same African mother often still shares her meager food with her children, in my book an action of an actualized person, and evidence that even in the worst of situation courage, humanity, and resilience still happen.