Freedom Convoy and Maslow's Hierachy of Needs

With a footnote on web3

I woke up this morning to see people sharing the Freedom Convoy movement on social media. Having been living under a rock (or in Toronto maybe it’s a mountain of snow,) I hadn’t heard about it until today.

According to their GoFundMe page that has raised nearly $7M, they are “taking [the] fight to the doorsteps of [the] Federal Government and demanding that they cease all mandates against its people.” This initiative seemed to have started as a result and response to the vaccine mandates imposed on truck drivers, and calls for drivers from both coasts to drive to Ottawa and demand the mandates lifted.

When I first read this, I felt conflicted. On the one hand, I am exhausted of the pandemic. I feel for the small businesses and countless individuals impacted over and over by our government’s response to crisis. I am angry with mandates that make no sense and do more harm than good. I am frustrated that things can change with no upfront warning. I too am over it. But on the other hand, I know nothing about this campaign. I have no idea if the people attending this convoy reflect my views and my values. I am unclear on the effectiveness of this campaign. So I read more.

It turns out the individual who put this initiative together is a woman named Tamara Lich. She is the Secretary of the Maverick Party, a right-wing party with roots in Alberta separatism. Their platform advocates against carbon taxes, Bill C-69 (No New Pipelines), the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People resolution (they support meeting with Indigenous leaders that have conveyed “progressive” agendas), and the Liberal firearms confiscation program. They advocate for more control over immigration, “genuine” refugees (would love to unpack what a genuine refugee is vs an ingenuine refugee), and a judicial system that places the punishment of crime and the protection of law-abiding citizens and their property ahead of all other objectives. Not great signs.

Another supporter of the convoy initiative is Pat King, founder of the Yellow Vests movement, which some researchers say “carries the ‘greatest potential for radicalization leading to violence’ in the country” and was known for holding pro-pipeline, Islamophobic and anti-immigration views, among others.

According to Peter Smith, a researcher with the Anti-Hate Movement, “There are definitely people within [the convoy group] who have a heart-in-the-right-place mentality, but it is a movement that is heavily informed by conspiracy theory, and is being organized by people who have a history of engaging with these groups," he said.

"You are a couple clicks away from blatant conspiracy theory — not something that's just a little bit on the edges, but quite significant."

There’s so much more about the organizers and the movements fuelling this “freedom” convoy but the point is now made, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach. I think back to 2020, when everyone was harmoniously cheering on and thanking our healthcare workers. Nearly 2 years later, we see so much division fuelled by misinformation and hatred. We’re so caught in the details that we’re not able to see the bigger picture. How did we get here?

If you ask me, a big proponent for why we’re here is rooted in one of the most eye-opening comparisons I’ve seen in the last few years: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs compared with the Siksika (Blackfoot) Hierarchy of Needs from which Maslow drew inspiration.

The main differentiator between the Western Perspective and the Indigenous Perspective is that Maslow centered the model on an individual in isolation, while the Blackfoot Nation centered the model on an individual within the context of a community. Maslow sought to ask how an individual can transcend beyond self-actualization as the primary goal, the Blackfoot people saw the self as the beginning, placing community actualization and cultural perpetuity above the individual. Herein lies the unfortunate and uncomfortable truth that fuels the divisiveness we see in the world today: we’re all so focused on ourselves.

Think about it this way, the Freedom Convoy exists because its participants are individually frustrated/tired/hungry/upset/mad at the circumstance. Fair enough. This is exactly how I feel as well. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we deserve our rights and freedoms; we are being bound by restrictions preventing us from living our best lives.

But if we look at it from a lens of the Blackfoot Nation, it actually goes beyond our individual thoughts and feelings. It goes beyond how I’m feeling, but how we as a people are doing. The Omicron surge happened because we have not achieved equity in our vaccine distribution. We in fact perpetuated this set of circumstances to happen because wealthy nations like Canada and the US, have hoarded vaccines and gatekept IP, technology, and process surrounding production.

If anything, COVID has proven that our Western Hierarchy of Needs is indeed deeply flawed. We need to start thinking about the collective, beyond ourselves, or this will never end.

But to actually do that and get there is another thing in and of itself. I’m reminded of another visualization that changed my life and my perspective from Wait but Why.

It’s easy to respond to the Freedom Convoy movements with anger. That’s my initial knee-jerk reaction. But we can’t fix division with more division. That would be the old, Western Hierarchy of Needs way to look at things, which we already know doesn’t work. We need to approach things differently, and I think the first step here is empathy. Understanding each other is the key to community, and as the Blackfoot Nation has shown us, community is the key.

Footnote/Author’s Final Thoughts

I didn’t want to make this article about tech, but when I’m feeling down about the world, I have to remind myself that community, and diversity of community is strength. Where I find myself feeling excited these days is web3, where community is the engine that powers the models of tomorrow. It forces us to consider perspectives where there is an ecosystem of stakeholders, and I’m just excited about a world where we work towards community actualization and cultural perpetuity rather than individual actualization and transcendence. It’s why I’m putting together a community for women in Canada who are crypto curious, because I want to start making steps towards that future a reality.