Well, once you’ve got the bottom few tiers of Maslow’s pyramid secured out, shouldn’t you start to think about the upper ones? And is chess evil because the pieces don’t refer to anything outside the game?
The word was secured. And yes, it means that most of your attention no longer needs to go to that area. That’s the entire point of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Once people have satisficed their low level needs they tend to focus more attention on higher, more abstract, goals.
I don’t mean you no longer need to eat, I mean that once you’ve reached a stable income that will allow you to eat as much as you need, you no longer need to worry about eating, and you can spend some of the time left over playing darts or whatever, rather than getting even more food into your fridge. Or why did you take the time to write that comment? Did it help you meet your basic survival needs somehow?
And is chess evil because the pieces don’t refer to anything outside the game?
Chess does a reasonable job of relating to reality in the sense I mean because the rules of the game and the person who wins are objective and (relatively) independent of any false beliefs about strategy the players might have. (If chess ever reaches the point that a player can get away with arguing that the laws of the game are arbitrary and that therefore he should be able to play some illegal move, that will be a sign that chess is becoming corrupted.)
Well, once you’ve got the bottom few tiers of Maslow’s pyramid secured out, shouldn’t you start to think about the upper ones? And is chess evil because the pieces don’t refer to anything outside the game?
...then you can ignore them, because that’s done?
The word was secured. And yes, it means that most of your attention no longer needs to go to that area. That’s the entire point of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Once people have satisficed their low level needs they tend to focus more attention on higher, more abstract, goals.
I don’t mean you no longer need to eat, I mean that once you’ve reached a stable income that will allow you to eat as much as you need, you no longer need to worry about eating, and you can spend some of the time left over playing darts or whatever, rather than getting even more food into your fridge. Or why did you take the time to write that comment? Did it help you meet your basic survival needs somehow?
Chess does a reasonable job of relating to reality in the sense I mean because the rules of the game and the person who wins are objective and (relatively) independent of any false beliefs about strategy the players might have. (If chess ever reaches the point that a player can get away with arguing that the laws of the game are arbitrary and that therefore he should be able to play some illegal move, that will be a sign that chess is becoming corrupted.)