The Power Mesh: A Modern Tower of Babel

Every day, leaders and followers meet inside The Power Mesh — that invisible web where influence, dependence, and emotion shape our world.
Yet the conflicts and confusion within The Power Mesh aren’t just about politics or personality. They stem from a deeper fact: we don’t all see the world through the same lenses.

We assume others want what we want, fear what we fear, and value what we value. But scratch the surface, and you find very different realities — rooted in deeper beliefs and what each of us is striving for at a given moment in life.

To understand this, we’ll initially (more to come) turn to two powerful psychological frameworks: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Spiral Dynamics. Together, they help us understand why our political and workplace conversations so often feel like modern Towers of Babel — everyone talking, few understanding.

WARNING: As will always be true in my articles, my goal is to provide new ways of thinking and interpreting what is going on in our politics and society so that both leaders and led can make better decisions. So, please use the following as prisms, not as absolute categories or definitions of any person. I will be offering other lenses in later articles. As always, my goal is to sharpen awareness, insight, understanding, and action in these polarized times.

The Needs Pyramid

Scientists have studied human motivation and its effects on behavior for over two centuries, debating the roles of biology, environment, and inner drives.

Why do we do what we do and value what we value? One attempt to answer this question is the Hierarchy of Human Needs described by psychologist Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Even if you are familiar with it, rethink its meaning in The Power Mesh.

Maslow proposes a pyramid of five needs that motivate behavior (he added the sixth later in life). Progressing from basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid, each need must be relatively satisfied for our focus to shift to higher level needs. When basic needs are unmet, they dominate our attention; once satisfied, higher aspirations emerge.

1. Physiological needs – food, water, health, survival
2. Safety – security, protection from harm, feeling safe
3. Belonging – love, connection, community
4. Esteem – recognition, dignity, self-worth
5. Self-actualization – realizing our potential and thinking/acting independently
6. Self-transcendence – changing our assumptions and beliefs based on experience, stage of life, and new knowledge

All these needs operate in us all the time, but usually one level is our focus. That dominance profoundly shapes what we notice, believe, and fight for — especially in The Power Mesh.

How Needs Operate in The Power Mesh

When people’s basic needs are threatened — food, safety, security, belonging — strong emotions like fear, anger, and blaming take over.

Savvy politicians and institutional leaders know this. They can either help people meet these needs through sound policy, or they can amplify and exploit them, turning survival-level fears into tools of control.

When basic needs consume us, it’s nearly impossible to focus on higher ones.

But as we feel safer, more secure, and not alone, higher level needs — esteem, self-actualization, self-transcendence — can take center stage. With them come independence and creativity. These higher needs and aspirations can make citizens harder to control, which is why authoritarian systems instinctively keep people preoccupied with survival and fear.

At any given moment, societies include people operating at every level of Maslow’s pyramid. However, the percentage focused on the higher needs is small compared with those on the lower rungs of the ladder. This isn’t a value judgment; it’s a human reality. It explains why the same message lands so differently across audiences.

When leaders speak from the top of the pyramid — about purpose, innovation, or legacy — to people struggling with hunger, rent, fear, or isolation, they sound tone-deaf.

Also, followers who struggle to put food on the table or get health care, feel insecure or unsafe, may surrender freedom and personal growth for security. I know a few people who remain on welfare because if they work a little bit, they will lose all (rather than a sliding scale based on income) of government support. And of course, some are willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for the promise of more (military) security.

People’s actions make sense from where they are on the ladder of needs.

Detecting the Needs Hierarchy in The Power Mesh

If we listen closely, every debate, policy, and workplace clash reveals the needs beneath it:

• Arguments over food, healthcare, housing, or wages echo physiological and safety needs.
• Battles over identity, inclusion, or belonging reflect social needs.
• Movements for dignity, equality, or purpose express esteem, self-actualization, and self-transformation needs.

Our Power Mesh becomes electrically charged because, without realizing it (or with a goal of manipulation), leaders and followers speak from different rungs on Maslow’s ladder.

From Needs to Worldviews: The Spiral Dynamics of Human Development

Maslow described what we need. Psychologist Clare Graves, whose research was later expanded by Don Beck (a late colleague of mine) and Chris Cowan, described how our worldviews evolve as life becomes more complex — shaping how we think, lead, and follow.

Their model, Spiral Dynamics, maps how societies and individuals develop new value systems as they adapt to changing conditions. (Cave dwellers lived in a hard but simple world. Imagine what they’d think of today’s high-tech, always-on civilization!)

Each worldview reflects the life conditions of its time. None is better or worse; each has strengths, blind spots, and lessons.

Spiral Dynamics proposes that societies face evolving problems of existence. When one set of problems is resolved, new ones appear — requiring a more complex worldview to handle them. Each stage solves many challenges of the previous one, yet creates new tensions of its own.

The process spirals upward, paralleling Maslow’s hierarchy, but focused less on individual needs and more on the collective consciousness shaping entire eras.

In short, Maslow explains what motivates us at a point in our lives, while Spiral Dynamics explores how we see and organize the world. Both influence how power operates in The Power Mesh.

A Simplified Tour of the Spiral

1. Survival

Worldview: Life is harsh and uncertain. The goal is to stay alive.
Power Source: Physical strength and immediate access to food, shelter, and safety.

2. Tribalism

Worldview: Safety and identity come through belonging to the group.
Power Source: Tradition, elders, shared myth, and magical thinking.

3. Raw Power

Worldview: The strong rule; order comes from domination.
Power Source: Fear, force, and the comfort of security in uncertainty.

4. Rules and Order

Worldview: Stability requires structure, law, and moral codes.
Power Source: Institutions, hierarchies, and divine or legal authority.

5. Achievement

Worldview: Progress comes through innovation, merit, and competition.
Power Source: Wealth, results, measurable success.

6. Humanism

Worldview: All people have dignity and deserve inclusion and equal rights.
Power Source: Empathy, cooperation, social influence.

7. Complex Systems

Worldview: The world is interconnected, dynamic, and fragile.
Power Source: Integration — the ability to connect, synthesize, and build trust amid uncertainty.

According to Spiral Dynamics, today’s conditions call for leaders capable of complex problem solving, and followers who can function in the world as it is.

Each new worldview arises when the previous one can’t solve the challenges of its time. None fully disappears; all coexist within and around us.

When Worldviews Collide

In the Power Mesh, these worldviews often collide:

• Those grounded in Rules see Achievers as selfish and Humanists as naïve.
• Achievers view Traditionalists as outdated and Complex thinkers as impractical.
• Humanists see Raw Power as barbaric and Rules as soul-killing.

Each is right within its own logic — and blind to what others are addressing.

We talk past one another because we’re not just disagreeing on facts — we’re reasoning from different worlds of meaning.

To those who hold them, these worldviews feel self-evident. So when others disagree with us, we assume they’re ignorant, immoral, or insane.

That assumption — the false consensus or egotism bias — is tearing our Power Mesh apart.

Power and Perspective

Leaders who understand both Maslow and Spiral Dynamics have an obligation to bridge divides. They can meet people where they are — without condescension — and help expand what they see as possible and needed.

In our 21st century, with its unique and growing problems, we need complex-systems leaders who can:

• Speak safety to the fearful and purpose to the secure.
• Honor rules, tradition, and achievement while enabling creativity and development.
• Balance individual prosperity with collective well-being.
• Rise above the various worldviews and interests to help find solutions to real problems.

A New Kind of Power Literacy

Maslow and Graves both saw civilization’s history as a journey — from survival through selfhood toward integration.

Their combined insights reveal something profound:

THE POWER MESH ISN’T BROKEN: IT’S ALIVE AND EVOLVING

We are living through the collision of worldviews that always accompanies an evolutionary leap.

Our initial task isn’t to “win” but to translate — to understand the fears, needs, and perspectives that shape others’ realities, and to act consciously from our own.

When we do, the Tower of Babel transforms from a symbol of confusion into a metaphor for ascent — many voices rising, not in chaos, but in harmony and respect, toward a higher understanding and a better shared future.