Maslow, you old coot

I refuse you, Maslow, and your hierarchy of needs. I will pull down your great chain of being, destroy your pyramid, brick by brick.

Instead of laying back, and scraping by to find an existence without pain and fear; instead of trying to resolve my needs for safety of health, future, and body, I am leaping with abandon into the most shaky life-raft that I know. I will shove off into dangerous waters, into a realm of possible worlds, unknown causation, and ideal forms, into the Platonic seas and heavens where no absolute certainty lies, but only an adventure questing for perfection awaits.

You cannot keep me, Maslow, in the twisted prison of your ordered living. I cannot bear it, for I will surely perish were I to follow your whims. You see, I could keep my body fresh, my teeth clean, my hunger sated and my thirst slaked, but your agenda would destroy all that it is to be a human. My body would sustain itself, but my spirit, my self, would wither, slowly, atrophying, utterly enervated by my constant scratching in the dirt for flesh, bones, and sinew. There is no foundation to be obtained there for me, Maslow, because there is no hope today of restoration. It serves me nothing to seek my health tonight, because my health is not forthcoming. So I defy you and your rotten axiomatic ways of the human condition. I defy you and thus deny the truth your harmony.

Now why don't you step down from your self actualization and get working on something productive?