How different is your modern culture from the Sawi tenants?

According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people must have certain needs met before moving on to the next level of needs. There are five different levels in Maslow's hierarchy of needs starting with the basic to the highest level:

1. Physiological: These are the fundamental needs in which people must meet in order to survive such as water, food, sleep, and air.

2. Security: In order to be able to move up to the next level, a person must be able to have a sense of security and not feeling threatened. Security includes things such as a safe place to live and job security.

3. Social: Once the "lower" level needs have been met, the motivation for "higher" level needs start to occur. The first level of higher levels is social needs, which is feeling the need to belong in a group, making friends, and sharing love.

4. Esteem: After exchanging love with people or having a group he/she belongs to, the person then moves on to feel the need of importance such as social status, accomplishment, self-esteem, and recognition.

5. Self-actualization: This is the defined by Maslow as "the full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc." However, this can never be satisfied because peoples' potential are always growing.

Most people of our modern culture today have the potential to reach the self-actualization level. Some do and some don't. However, the people of the Sawi tribe are so deprived that all they live for may not even pass the second level. In a community where treachery is held in the highest value, how can any one of them be able to make trustworthy relationships? How can they be able to know whether the "friend" that they had grown up with for years might actually turn out to be the one that would one day slaughter him and eat his flesh? The Sawi people are not that much different from us. They just need direction and the guidance that will lead them to the right path. As a matter of fact, that is what we all need in order to live the fulfilling life that God wants us to live. We shouldn't judge the Sawi people as being an evil tribe that likes to practice deceit and cannibalism. Sure, those two are quite evil concepts. However, we are all fallen and any kind of sin is still sin. The only difference is whether we continue to live sinful lives or we strive to live the life that brings glory to God.