How practical is the “hierarchy of human desires”?

Question from the Internet:

“Is Maslow's hierarchy really real, and is it only a perspective?”

It does not matter if we use Maslow’s system, or if we simply categorize our desires as instinctive/animate (food, sex, family), social (wealth, power, control, fame, and knowledge), and a higher, so far unfelt, untapped desire for knowing the Human purpose of our existence.

In our times, the majority of humanity received the ability to fulfill our distinctive, animate desires for a simple, adequate physical existence, while most also have enough money and we can freely access knowledge over the Internet. Regarding controlling others, fame, power most people are happy just to have control over their own lives.

Despite this, we live in the most depressed, hopeless, empty generation in human history, as after all the chase for fulfilling the above desires we tangibly, irrevocably feel that something is missing.

More and more people realize that simply fulfilling all the other desires — even if I have fame, complete control over others, and all the money I can imagine — I feel terribly unfulfilled to the point of running to drugs, extreme activities, chasing, cheating death or even committing suicide. We have the lives of celebrities and famous leaders in front of us as an open book.

We cannot call ourselves Human, we cannot feel comfortable “in our skin” as long as we haven’t identified and fulfilled the unique, very high, evolutionary Human purpose Nature’s evolution determined for us.

Even solving our mounting, seemingly unsolvable physical, “earthly” problems will remain impossible without understanding who we really are and what “cogwheel role”, purpose we have to fulfill in Nature’s deterministic, lawful, fully integrated system.