Perhaps the most damaging idea in all of modern business and middlebrow philosophy is Maslow's Pyramid. You know the one that puts "roti, kapda, makaan" at the bottom and "morality, creativity, meaning" at the top. The problem isn't in the existence of those needs. It is that they are arranged in a strict hierarchy. That a "higher" need is felt only when the ones below it are met. The idea has persisted from ancient Greece and India, through the feudal and colonial ages, down to the era of the "global south". Let us aristocrats worry about art and beauty, you just focus on surviving the winter. Unfortunately this silly notion does not survive the barest contact with reality. Everybody has all these needs, simultaneously. The poor have as much capacity to be affected by the plight of wild animals or feel wonder at the sight of a soaring rocket. Love, self-esteem, morality - these are the things that make us human, not what emerges once you ascend from serfdom. The condescending framework not only leads to nonsense like this - "how can India invest in a space program when there isn't enough food?", "how can a poor country focus on tigers when its people live in slums?" - but also business decisions that backfire spectacularly. If you go back a decade when the internet first reached our unwashed masses, the first business plans were all a version of "provide soil information to farmers so they plan crops better". Guess what the farmer first did when he got online? Memes and short videos. The need for entertainment is universal. The need to share with friends is universal. The need to be seen as cool is universal. Because Maslow's needs are not a pyramid - they're a circle.