Start with Maslow’s needs:

Then expand it a little:

• self-actualization (morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance, purpose, meaning, inner potential)
• esteem (confidence, achievement, respect of others, feeling of uniqueness)
• love and belonging needs (friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection)
• safety and security (information, curiosity and novelty, health, employment, property, family & social ability)
• physiological (breathing, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep)

So maybe each day we work up the list and work on any deficiencies because if the layer below isn’t stable, the higher categories will be badly compromised.

But within the hierarchy, we often take almost any of these evolutionarily attractive sub-categories and follow them way beyond what is actually good for us (at least, beyond the short term).

For example:

• We pursue power for esteem and respect, way beyond what we might ‘need’. We use it completely selfishly and thus lose other’s respect. (Future proposition for consideration: when we do over-emphasise one of these categories too much, do we also seriously compromise on one of the others?? Suspect so.)
• We might doomscroll instead of doing the housework. This evolutionary response is giving us dopamine rewards for pursuit of information or novelty.
• We pursue sugar and salt as evolution has conditioned us, but to the detriment of our health.
• We might gather property way beyond our needs, in the pursuit of safety and esteem. We might then get bogged down in holding on and maintaining the same, to the detriment of more useful higher needs.

Maybe the danger is getting stuck on a level (e.g. power, property) and thus restricting our ability to move upwards to more satisfying levels.

There’s an implicit assumption there. Higher levels are more ‘worthy’ or ‘desirable’: what does that mean? Are we saying that the topmost self-actualization layer is the best to inhabit? I’m attracted to people who spend a lot of time there, but is that ‘better’ than Donald Trump being attracted by other people who are big on power, prestige, and money?

Maybe add the nurturing idea. Are we are more ‘nurtured’ as humans when we strive higher in the categories. We all know (personally and media) plenty of people stuck on the esteem level, but I suspect (more justification needed) that we admire and want to emulate those on the top layer more. Is this yearning innate, cultural or environmental? Does this smack up against the pure evolutionary idea of survival of the fittest? Are the powerful ones (esteemed over-achievers) more likely to survive and propagate than those who concentrate on the top layer??

Perhaps the point is that moderation on all these layers, and all these categories is the best plan, to allow both the individual and society to thrive. Evolutionarily, that would make more sense, as the most balanced and long-lasting societies and their members survive best in moderation of the categories. Maybe this is why the Scandinavians are happy, and their societies relatively happy. Perhaps when civilisations do decline and fall, any moderation has warped into imbalance and both the individual and the population suffer. We know this is common when oligarchs take control of a society, or warlike factions warp esteem of others into hatred, or when a government ceases to prioritise all its citizens equally (this warping safely and security).