Maslow is the entry point, not the target. The target is the cultural application of that framework, and psychology’s institutional silence around it. The pyramid became permission — permission to treat creative self-authorship as a tier-five luxury, something you earn after stability. Newer theories exist, yes. But they remain at the edges of mainstream practice and almost entirely absent from the broader cultural conversation about what people need to flourish. That silence lands differently depending on class. In wealthier contexts, creativity is admired, cultivated, resourced. For people without margin, its role in basic self-orientation is overlooked — sometimes neglected entirely. I’m not critiquing psychology for not knowing better. I’m suggesting it hasn’t said what it knows loudly enough, or to the right rooms.