MASLOW, COVEY VS. TERROR

How do you stop the spread of ter­ror? Blowing stuff up in Fallujah won’t help much, says one Defense Department intel­li­gence ana­lyst, over at Kris Alexander’s blog. Instead, you’ve got to focus on Maslow’s hier­ar­chy of needs — espe­cially the parts about “belongi­ness” and “self-​​actualization.” And adopt Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The cra­zi­est part about the plan? It isn’t as as crazy — or as touchy-​​feely — as it sounds at first. Give it a read.
THERE’S MORE: Defense Tech Dad Tom Shachtman says Maslow doesn’t really apply to would-​​be Muslim terrorists.

Maslow’s frame of ref­er­ence is west­ern, Judaeo-​​Christian tra­di­tion, and his hier­ar­chy of needs, won­der­ful and applic­a­ble to us though I think it is, falls apart when used as a cri­te­rion for judg­ing the moti­va­tions of peo­ple who are not in those tra­di­tions. Highly reli­gious, highly-​​traditional cul­tures, and non-​​Western cul­tures, place greater empha­sis on the third level of needs than on any­thing hav­ing to do with indi­vid­ual aspi­ra­tions. So hold­ing out the car­rot to a Muslim mother that her son will become a well-​​trained pro­fes­sional in a non-​​lethal field does not have the same appeal as it does to a Cincinnati soc­cer mom.

April 29th, 2005 | Strategery | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.