Values For An Ideal World

The British-based organization Common Cause provides an excellent, formal discussion of current research into world values, and how it relates to issues of social and environmental health. By comparison, I have tended to be pretty loose in my treatment of the subject of values, citing specific applications interchangeably with their deeper motivations. For example, my valuing the maximum amount and thriving of life over time and space is a special consequence of action based upon the formal "self-transcendence" group of values; it is also closely related to what I have been calling "global responsibility." Not surprisingly, the opposite group of formal values, "self-enhancement," corresponds to maximizing personal "happiness" and meeting "personal responsibility." There are two other, opposing formal groups of values, "openness to change" and "conservation," which in my world-view are more aligned with the "openness" dimension of personality that prefers certain "environments" over others (in this case, dynamic vs. static). As Common Cause points out, we all have these values to varying degrees that depend on specific situations, but we also have preferences (much like we have preferred personalities) which will make us more or less inclined to change our circumstances.

In the context of creating a healthier world that approaches the ideal, where humanity doesn't suffer major population loss and it gives other species more power so they can reduce the threat of uninhabitability, self-enhancement and conservation can no longer be dominant. More variability in the environment is inescapable whether or not we pursue this course, since a significant amount of climate change is already locked in, so those of us who prefer change will tend to benefit more than those who don't. If we choose to let pursuit of personal power dominate, conditions will only get worse; because people with power will benefit from further limits on resources and therefore promote more, until they can't, and we will all fight to the death for the remaining scraps.

The requisite change in dominant values can occur voluntarily or not. In my concept of an ideal world, the change is voluntary, proceeding from a fact-based civil discussion of what our dominant values will be and the preferred consequences of living by those values. Reality is likely to be a lot messier, even if we do readjust our values in time to avoid calamity, which I consider a long shot worth taking.

Responsibility and Power

If, as in my version of an ideal world, every person and organization took full responsibility for their impact on each other and other species, including those in the future, it is safe to say that the human enterprise would slow to a crawl, contract in scale to an extremely modest level, or both.

I've done a lot of studying so I can begin to grasp the scope of my own impact. I suspect that this alone puts me in the minority, at least in terms of motivation. Yet I'm only now becoming aware of the outlines of my impact, and am still hard-pressed to make more than modest adjustments to my behavior. Much of what I study is work done by others, typically from academic science; if I limited my activities to things I had direct experience or knowledge of, I might be forced by my ignorance to live a much more primitive existence.

One of the advantages of living in a community, as I've said many times, is compensating for each other's weaknesses, one being our lack of knowledge. When I read, I'm relying on part of the larger community of people who have collected, distilled, and disseminated their experience, and lessons from it, in a usable form. A fundamental duty of being part of a community is to share our own experience and insights, which I try to do with my writing. Another advantage of being in a community is the use of social pressure to encourage some behaviors and discourage others, when it would be inefficient or impractical to educate us about the impact of our actions in appropriate time.

If we try to opt out of being in community with others, we risk increasing the amount of harm (or decreasing the mount of good) we might do to them, ourselves, and future generations, not to mention the other forms of life that interact to keep the world livable for all. Social pressure helps to mitigate this risk if we are still physically (if not intentionally acting as) part of a community. If we are successfully able to dampen that pressure, then we are a threat to the extent of our personal power, and some other way must be found to either educate us or limit our power to a safe level.

When as a global community we are not unwilling or incapable of discharging our responsibilities, then it is incumbent on us to find a way to do so, even if it means reducing our collective power over the world. If we don't do so, then the many variables we can't control will eventually lead to a blunt reduction of our power through population decline, which is failure by definition.