Values Underlie All Decision-Making.
Whether a decision is made in less than a millisecond or takes years to formulate, a set of values always bears upon the intentions for making that decision. The value that has sustained our species is LIFE. The three primary values that have motivated our species’ incredible dominance of this planet include our pursuit of an ever-improving quality of life, to grow into our individual innate potential, and to do so equally as anyone else would or could. The three secondary values of empathy, compassion, and “Love” give us the qualities that define us as being humane and merciful even when survival might demand otherwise.
Life |
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Quality Of Life |
Growth |
Equality |
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| The Secondary Value-Emotions That Make Us Human — Humane >>> |
Empathy |
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Compassion |
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“Love” |
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“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries
Without them humanity cannot survive.”
— Dalai Lama
Values in More Detail —
LIFE, the Ultimate Value. Life is the ultimate value that provides the pivotal element for the existence of the other six values as a system of values. Decisions made about life are qualified by the other six values. These six values become the criteria for human decision-making for survival and for the highest expressions of human existence and our humanity.
Together, the three primary values provide a reliable, universal, and organic foundation for making moral decisions among the many options that life offers us in every social situation. Together, they provide a holism to the continuum of life and living where one value does not exist in isolation by itself but is synergistically related to the other values. They give support for a sustainable moral life much as three legs are the minimum requirement for a free standing stool. They become central to a code of decision-making that supports improvement of the social sustainability in all relationships from the level of intra-personal to the relationship of nations. Because of that, they will become the necessary central qualifying elements for any community or nation to extend its social and moral existence into the realm of centuries and millennia.
- The term “value” has a meaning in sociology that is both similar to and yet distinct from the meaning assigned to it in everyday speech. In sociological usage, values are group conceptions of the relative desirability of things. Sometimes “value” means “price.” But the sociological concept of value is far broader, where neither of the objects being compared can be assigned a price.
The idea of deeply held convictions is more illustrative of the sociological concept of value than is the concept of price. In addition, there are four other aspects of the sociological concept of value. They are: (1) values exist at different levels of generality or abstraction; (2) values tend to be hierarchically arranged (3) values are explicit and implicit in varying degrees; and (4) values often are in conflict with one another. Source: www.sociologyguide.com
Quality of Life. While LIFE is fundamental to survival and continued existence, it is the quality of life that makes life worth living and gives life meaning. In a democracy, access to the quality of life is provided when a person not only has an equal right to life, but that person also has an equal right to growth as anyone else. This is what makes immigrants so excited to move to a democracy — they seek freedom to experience the quality of life that makes life worth living — to control their own destiny and to explore their innate potential with the opportunities that a democratic nation provides.
Growth is essential for improving our quality of life. To be human is to strive to grow into our innate potential. Our yearning to grow ensures that our innate potential becomes expressed and fulfilled, and collectively encourages an improving quality of life for everyone that results in social progress.
This value ensures that the inherent potential of individuals, societies, and a civilization becomes expressed and fulfilled, which encourages an improving quality of life for everyone. Without growth, there would be no possibility of social evolution and social sustainability. Once the population of our global civilization is balanced with our planet’s natural resources, then growth has everything to do with improving the quality of life of individuals, rather than the quantitative growth of populations to support economic growth. Until then difficult moral decisions will have to be made that move our communities and societies toward that balance.
Equality is inherent in the value of life. We give equal value to each individual, and we would seek to provide more equitable opportunity to every individual to develop their innate potential, as we would our own. Even those with less potential than others have equal value to live life to explore, develop, and express the potential they do have. Without equality, life is a competition where the resources of one’s living-potential is squandered in competitive warlike existence. Then there is no moral equity available.
These primary values have promoted our species thriving success by our individual need to pursue a better quality of life. The value that supports an improving quality of life is our almost infinite capacity for growth. Growth provides an improving quality of life that allows us to not only cope with the vicissitudes of life but to learn from them. The third value, equality, has given rise to intense competition to grow to achieve a higher quality of living when we compare our life’s circumstances to others. Equality is the constant personal and cultural awareness that “I am as valuable as anyone else to enjoy a higher quality of life.”
Characteristics of these Values —
Self-Evident — The self-evident nature of these values is only one of several characteristics that have obscured their presence while in plain sight. These three values are self-evident similarly as those stated in the famous sentence in the United States Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths (values) to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The proof of this becomes evident when people around the world are asked whether they would like to enjoy an improved quality of life, as they define it.
Universal — These values are also universal to all people of all races, cultures, ethnicity, nations, and genders. Ask anyone, whether they live in Bangladesh or Baltimore, Houston or Hanoi, or any other city if they would like to develop the innate potential they brought into life … to improve their quality of life with an equal ability as anyone else would or could. The answers are universally the same whether a poor person is asked or a multi-billionaire. Everyone I have talked to as a holistic life coach has chosen to improve the quality of their life, and grow into their potential.
Irreducible — The three primary values are the superordinate values of our species and are not subordinate to any other values. The pursuit of an improving quality of life, growth, and equality provide the foundation for human motivation, (page 17), as interpreted by the individual, and express themselves in a personal hierarchy of needs.
Organic / Innate / Timeless — Even though I cannot prove it, evidence seems to suggest that these three values are organic to our species and are perhaps embedded in our DNA from our earliest beginnings. They have motivated us, everyone, to yearn for the improvement of our quality of life materially and socially. We can safely predict that these same values will continue to motivate our species to enjoy an ever-improving quality of life, and to grow into our innate potential in future centuries and millennia.
Three Secondary Value-Emotions that Make Us Human—
EQUALITY → Empathy, Compassion, and “Love”
The three secondary value-emotions emanate from the primary value “equality.” The reason that we are so sensitive to issues of equality is that we have the innate capacity of empathy – to “feel” or put our self in the place of another and sense what that is like, whether that is in anguish or in joy. Feeling that, we want to act in compassion 3 – to reach out to the other and assist them in their plight. We generalize empathy and compassion all of humanity with the term “Love” – the capacity to care for another person or all of humanity, as we would for our self.
Our motivation for equality is stimulated when we compare our own life to that of others and see that the quality of their life is “better” or “worse” than our own. Our sense of inequality then rises within us to motivate us to seek equality for us, and equality for them stimulated by our empathy and compassion for them.
The primary value equality is the nexus of our “head” and “heart” energies that integrate both centers to support and nurture our holistic integration as a person who is “fully human – humane.” This holism enables us to see others as we see our self without being competitive. This is the true essence of “equality.” It is the source of our sense of “oneness” with others, and enables us to extend our compassion to others in the most ennobling expressions, as example with Nobel Laureates for Peace.
To seek to improve our quality of life, to grow and to do so equally as any other person could or would, to have a sense of empathy for others, and then to reach out in compassion to assist them, and to “Love” the humanity in all others — that is evidence of being fully human. Being fully human, these value-emotions come as a package: When we feel empathy for another, our immediate impulse is to provide an act of compassion, because we have a connection to all others of our species that we often name as our “love for humanity.”
What is remarkable about these three value-emotions is that while they are subjective in nature, in reality they can be objectively measured when we observe the values they generate: acceptance, appreciation, recognition, validation, respect, loyalty, faithfulness, trust, authenticity, vulnerability, genuineness, self-identity, and identity of others, and many more. These secondary emotional-responses are what make “love” love!
People are Innately Good. Just as the three primary values of social sustainability (quality of life, growth, and equality) are organic and innate to every person of every race, culture, ethnicity, nationality, and gender, the three secondary value-emotions are innate as well. While they are not learned behaviors they are discretionary in nature and can be enhanced with conscious practice. They exist in us as an impulse to do good to others. They are proof that people are innately good. We want peace for others, for example, as much as we want peace for ourselves because we are wired with the values that make us human – humane.
The three secondary value-emotions clearly identify us as social individuals rather than asocial or antisocial beings. Their expression is evidence of being socialized — to care for others equally as we do for our self — to be humane. The exceptions are those who received dysfunctional socialization or learned predatory values as they were being raised; those who developed negative interpretations of themselves and others; those who have chosen to be other than innately good; or are mentally defective.
Organizations and the Three Secondary Values —
When people suffer and their very existence is in jeopardy, when an improving quality of life is not possible, and when growth is put off and equality is absent, it is very rare that the value-emotions of empathy, compassion, and “Love” are expressed. When people are able to pursue an improving quality of life, to begin growing into their innate potential with an equal ability as others, then empathy, compassion, and “Love” are able to come into expression. The primary values that have sustained our species set the stage for the individual’s capability to express their innate value-emotions of empathy, compassion, and “Love.”
When families, communities, and societies have attained a relative state of social, political, and economic stability, they, too, become capable of expressing the secondary value-emotions similarly as do individuals. To the contrary, though, what we see from observing the behavior of organizations is not consistent with that premise. Something is surely missing when organizations of great means do not act compassionately. Organizations have not come to appreciate these six values as ultimately necessary to support their own sustainability and that of societies.
Our species will be sustained into future millennia simply by procreation, invention, and adaptation. For organizations and societies to become sustainable, they must take the extra step to incorporate the three primary values of social sustainability into their “organizational DNA,” into their decision-making and operations. Social-societal, political-governmental, and financial-economic organizations provide the necessary supports for a functional society. But, that does not assure those organizations or their host societies will become sustainable into future millennia.
One critical element is missing: Organizations do not have DNA and an organic set of socially sustainable values to support option-development, choice-making, decision-making, or action-implementation that supports their continuing, sustainable existence. If we want to see an explosion of compassion in our societies, followed by peace, then we must persuade all organizations, corporations, foundations of all types, and governmental agencies to adopt the three primary values to assure their existence into the far distant future; and to use the three secondary values as the criteria for decision-making and action that qualify their actions as being humane.
Summary —
Conscious application of the three primary values of social sustainability is enough for families, communities, and societies to achieve long-term social stability and eventually social sustainability. Achieving that status, however, does not automatically assure that they will become more compassionate and humane. Yes, they would surely become “just” societies but that does not assure that they will also become compassionate, humane, kind, or fair. Clearly, if the best of human nature is humane, sensitive enough to be empathic and able to give and receive compassion, then we should expect our communities, societies, and organizations to reflect the same qualities. How else can we meaningfully engage widespread problems of social justice, social equity, what is fair, and the common good? Those social problems can only be engaged with fairness and lack of bias when we use the values that are universal to all people of all races, cultures, ethnicity, nationality, and gender.