Trompe Le Toil

Abraham Maslow once suggested that if all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look rather like a nail. From my desk, where I use my laptop to tweet, make dinner reservations, and do the labour that somehow amounts to making a living, everything looks like work. You may remember Maslow from your high school psychology text book. The “hierarchy of needs” model has been at the root of contemporary understandings of personal development and motivation since it was first published in the scholarly Psychological Review in 1947. It outlines a seemingly direct progression toward the vaunted state of self-actualization based on a series of increasingly complex needs. At the bottom are physiological ones (air, food, water) and closer to the top are sociological functions (a sense of belonging, or having the feeling of making a valid and appreciated contribution to the community). Maslow’s model continues to provide the basis for how we understand the complexities of human...