Ah, thanks
@Steve R. - its good to know that someone else appreciates and understands the work of Herbert Maslow. I have used his pyramid in arguments here (and elsewhere) for years, frequently getting blank stares.
You reminded me of two additional societal themes that apply today. One which we previously exchanged thoughts on was that of:
Frederick Jackson Turner and the closing of the American West. In short, the US (actually the world) is now "
full". Those people who don't fit into society now have nowhere to go since the frontier no longer exists as it is now "
civilized", the disaffected can't escape into the (lawless) wilderness. Consequently, society has to take care of them (welfare state?). To make a brief superficial analogy, if the US was not "
full" and there was an empty vastness with no government, those desiring to make a new society (by looting, burning, protesting) could emigrate into the wilderness to create their own utopia.
In the other example, when I was in college circa 1968, one of my sociology professors covered the implication of mass society on government structure. Since being out of college, I haven't heard much concerning this (this theme may not be dead.) Probably considered an "
inconvenient truth" to be disappeared. Essentially this theory holds that the more people you have (in urban areas) the bigger government must be to manage society. It was a very interesting course.
What is also interesting to speculate on. What we are witnessing today (besides the reemergence of McCarthyism), follows a parallel patern with the protests of the 1960s. In those 1960 protests the Vietnam era soldiers were designated as
"baby killers" (1960s). Today, the police have been substituted as the target by the left. The police (2021) now being declared thugs who systematically target Black males for death. Unfortunately, the radicals of today seem to have been more succesful at upending society than the radicals of the 1960s.
