38. Maslow’s Hierarchy

Our co-host’s eye was drawn to a weathered tome in an antiquarian bookshop: The White Monk of Timbuctoo, by William Seabrook. It promised (and delivered) the life story of a French defrocked priest living in great luxury in a mud palace in 1930s Timbuktu, all in electric prose and fitting into a long-standing interest in high-agency colonial Frenchmen doing interesting things in liminal spaces. See also: Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Henry de Montfried.

This white monk, Auguste Dupuis aka Pere Yakouba, had been in the first group of missionaries to make it alive to Timbuktu. They set up a clinic and chapel, and he ended up leading the mission. He was slightly scandalous, a heavy drinker and extremely French womaniser, so was sent on a new mission to Dahomey which he completely nailed. Recalled to become a bishop, he decided that he actually didn’t want to leave Timbuktu so left the church, married a local, and became a local worthy - a career that culminated in establishing a university.

What can we learn from this career? In modernity, we are focused on the bottom rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - food, shelter, safety. We spend our lives chasing more and more refined versions of these, we eat the finest foods, live in the nicest houses, but we fail to ascend. The third level of the hierarchy of needs is love and belonging, but we have dating apps, a low birth rate and a loneliness epidemic. The fourth level is esteem, but depression is rife. As for self-actualisation - joy, transcendence, insight - it is a rare London professional who achieves that.

In a materialist system, the only answer to self-actualisation is better food and a nicer house, cooler stuff, but this white monk shows us an alternative: achieve an acceptable level of food, shelter, security and so forth, perhaps even take a gamble on them and then keep working your way up the hierarchy to meaning, purpose and peak experience - where the focus should be. This feels… better?

William Seabrook’s own career is also an interesting one - we recommend his Wikipedia page.