Values exist in an ecology of Tensions
by Lalith Gunaratne – Member of Values Committee of CACOR
The CACOR Values Project has its origins in the “Values Quest Project” jointly proposed by the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and the Club of Rome (CoR) at a meeting convened by the Club of Rome in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in May 2011.
CACOR’s own Values project evolved from that and took a life of its own with Sheila Murray’s leadership then handed over to Gabriela Gref-Innes. A team that also included Alani Galbraith and John Maskell moved the conversation forward. Then a core team of John Verdon, Gabriela Gre-Innis and I picked up on the foundational work to focus on facilitating a few sessions for the CACOR membership.
The Values Project was presented to the CACOR membership in May 2015, and members were asked to articulate their notion of Values, which was compiled in September 2016. Most of the responses showed values as not static, but means different things to different people.
I share a sample of them below;
Zack Jacobson: My main value is to save the future of humanity; our species’ extinction is unthinkable to me.
Robert Hoffman: ‘Values’ is a word with many meanings…. Values are context dependent and may be culturally specific. Advocacy of a universal set of values is apt to be ineffective as values can only be understood in their societal context.
Ted Manning: Core value variants (what an individual chooses to place as important) may help determine the prime measure(s) against which an individual solves issues. The current power system in the “west” tends to peripheralize all but short term benefits in terms of own values and try to maximize benefits in terms of those. The challenge is to have “value” attributed to a broader range of values in the decision process.
John Maskell: For as long as there have been generations of humans on earth we have espoused the value of vested self-interest. We have convinced ourselves that acting on the basis of self-interest and protecting and enhancing “my” and “our” assets, is human nature. We have enshrined vested self-interest in our cultural, political, economic and social institutions. We have monetized it, installed it in the bowels of our financial institutions and made it the unseen basis of almost all our decision-making processes; we have allowed it to trump virtually all other values. However, most mothers and many fathers KNOW that vested self-interest is NOT the primary human value. Caring, nurturing, loving and providing-for, at a soul level, is our primary value.
Ann Galley: When values change, so does society. Money has changed values in society and if that is the case the importance of integrity in the process of dealing with money. However, in a rapidly changing world, with changing values, the impact is only as good as the people continuing to uphold the WHOLE project.
Ian Whyte: Values mean everything. It is the arrogant, anthropocentric humanist value set which authorises, legitimatizes and even requires the ongoing destruction of the Earth. Society’s current value set leads to the Earth’s current death spiral, and is, the value set of death. An ecocentric value set would do nothing of the sort, but would be life affirming.
Alani Galbriath: What if our great grandchildren could require each of us to answer for our actions and choices; what values will we tell them we used to decide what kind of world they would inherit?
Elaine Issabelle: Because values provide a basis for action, they underlie and facilitate social change. Conversation about values is essential to achieving consensus on the sustainable management of the commons.
We took a cue from all this and decided to work towards a practical session for a conversation about values. We wanted to highlight tensions and paradoxes if we are to come to terms with what it means for sustainability. That then became the core theme for the February 2017 event – “Values exist in an ecology of Tensions”
John Verdon, in his preamble to the session wrote;
The first question concerns the abstract concept of ‘Values’ – things like justice, fairness, equity, equality, freedom or more recently the environment, ecology, sustainability.
The question of Values, is mediated by language, as McLuhan noted language doesn’t live in human rather human exist in language. As we language about and with Values – we can only enact them in our lives, behaviour and social experience giving them personal and inter-personal ‘accounts’ through which we guide our lives.
The capacity to establish a dynamic homeostasis of values in a robust and flourishing society-in-environment is vital. But enacting such is a complex endeavour where values exist within an ecology of tensions and even a ‘conversation of paradoxes’.
John then went onto espouse that “Truth is dead – Long live Honesty”, extended to “Ethics are Dead, Long Live Morality”, which then calls for individual responsibility.
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