Psychologist Abraham Maslow had a theory of motivation which came to be known as the Hierarchy of Needs. Roughly, it claimed that people were motivated to meet their physical and material needs before attempting to meet their spiritual and psychological ones. This principle could also describe the process of production.
In Plato’s dialogue Critias, which recounts the story of the lost city of Atlantis, he writes of its citizens that “as they themselves and their children lacked for many generations the necessaries of life, they directed their attention to the supply of their wants, and of them they conversed, to the neglect of events that had happened in times long past; for mythology and the enquiry into antiquity are first introduced into cities when they begin to have leisure, and when they see that the necessaries of life have already been provided, but not before.” In other words, only after the necessaries of life have been produced can such fields and history and mythology arise. Not that such fields can’t or won’t exist at all, but only that they will be subordinate.
We can also observe a similar pattern in more contemporary examples. In early America, for example, nearly 90% of the population farmed; today, less than 2% does. One way to measure productive progress, then, is to consider the variety of goods and services available, as well as how many address basic, physical needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing, versus how many address “higher-order” needs, such as art, scientific knowledge, entertainment, and leisure.
And it is worth noting that the more advanced productive processes address those needs that make us distinctly human.
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