Maslow’s Hierarchy of Cheez
Fundamentally we all need cheez. This was proven by the gentleman scholar, Abe Maslow, as early as 1940. Stumbling drunk from behind the ag school’s dairy barn early one morning, Abe was heard to mutter, “Undergrads, cheez… can’t live with them, can’t get in their knickers.” While much of this was naturally incomprehensible to the Chairman and the Dean who happened to be within earshot that morning, they well understood the reference to cheese. This was after all, the University of Wisconsin, where you’re as likely to turn your ankle on a big gouda used as a doorstop in the lecture hall as you are to find a wedge of cheddah with your apple pie in the dining commons. It’s the law. No cheddah, no pie (1935 Laws of Wis., ch. 106). We take this shit seriously.
The big federal grants for torturing monkeys had yet to be won, and the Rogerian adventure in mass media pop psych was still waiting for the birth of network TV, but Abe was there charting the course, bridging the gap between both analytic and experimental psychology with a sociological interpretation that Friedrich N., Dick Wagner and Herr Schicklegruber all would have found to their taste.
As you can see from the accompanying diagram, for most of us it all revolves around hunger and fear. Curds, whey, and a jar of Spider-Be-Gone are the essential tools for people functioning on these lower levels. Ascending the pyramid we work our way through cheddar (social cheese), Swiss (ego cheese), the blues… Stilton or Roquefort depending on which side of the channel you land (the self actualization moldy cheeses), and finally - at the top of the pyramid according to some revisionist geek whose name escapes me we find the Limburger (stinky cheese for all your spirtual needs… transcending social values).