What follows is a procedural outline for developing programs that are consistent with the values that underlie all human activity and all human decision-making.  It is also a useful tool for validating existing programs and their objectives to determine which will provide results that are consistent with those values, and which will not. 

The procedure is provided in a one-page format that I call “Social Sustainability Design and Validation Schematic,” see the link.

The Schematic is a remarkable instrument because it can be used to design socially sustainable policies and social processes, and to validate existing policies, statutes, political campaign “planks,” moral and ethical issues, and many more.  Because it is based on the values that are innate to humans, it enables us to work our way through our thinking from the obvious to the obscure.  It helps us peel away the layers of our thinking to reveal the rationales, justifications, biases, assumptions, and prejudices that cause our lives to become UNsustainable.  It asks one primary question:  

Do our measurable behaviors, expectations, beliefs, and assumptions support the seven values of social sustainability?

The top half of the Schematicis used to identify the topic or issue that is being examined.  The bottom half provides a procedural outline to validate your beliefs and assumptions, expectations, and how you fulfill the top half of the Schematic. 

The Values in Column #10 are the criteria for cross-checking and validating the entries in Columns 6-9. 

The synergism of the three primary values becomes clear when we discern that quality of lifeis valued equallyby each person; and that life becomes meaningless without the hope that equalopportunities provide us to growinto our potential, and explore our abilities for improving our quality of life.  Because hope manifests as confidence, the loss of confidence of the public in their ability to satisfy the values that urge them on almost always leads to feelings, collectively, of social depression — hopeless and helpless to affect the circumstances of their life.  Then social, political, and economic reactions can become volatile and unstable. 

Beliefs.  No one can rationally argue against these values as being universal to all people.  Yet, as we will see almost immediately, when it comes to beliefs, there can be extreme variations of interpretations between people based on those same values.  Even though there are only three simple primary values how we interpret those values generates hundreds of value-interpretation and beliefs.  Some of those beliefs are hidden as invisible assumptions until someone questions our beliefs as being valid. 

Assumptions.  Our interpretations of these universal values are almost always colored by underlying assumptions or sets of assumptions to form a hidden set of beliefs.  Discovering those assumptions of how they do and don’t support the social sustainability of an individual, family, community, or society is one of the primary reasons for using the Schematic.  No common ground (peace) will ever be gained until all of the beliefs, assumptions, and expectations become exposed and processed through the Schematic.  The process of listing our beliefs,relative to the topic being examined,provides a visible means of developing commonality and productive unison of action, when we compare our beliefs with other people. 

Examining Assumptions.  Because assumptions are almost always invisible to the person who holds them it becomes a vital necessity to expose those assumptions in a Design and Validation Team.  It begins by asking individuals pertinent and pointed questions about their beliefs.  Disagreement of beliefs between team members is evidence of hidden assumptions.  That is a signal to begin the gentle and diplomatic process of determining how each person who holds a difference of belief gained their assumed belief. 

The wide variation of expectationsfor each belief is due to the underlying, unspoken assumptionseach individual accepted early in their life, and are usually quite unaware of their existence.  Because of this, no progress will ever be made by any two people, team, family, community, or society until those assumptions have been clearly revealed. ^[1]   Conscientiously using the Schematic will eventually reveal and identify those assumptions. 

Once the assumptions are exposed, then they need to be validated or invalidated using the criteria of the three primary values.  If beliefs and assumptions are hard to define, then look to the expectationsand the criteria of fulfillment of those beliefs and assumptions to make them visible. 

Expectations.  We tend to live our lives minute-by-minute and day-by-day with incredible lists of expectations in mind for each of our beliefs, and our hidden assumptions.  From the time of our childhood we have simply accepted those expectations and their hidden assumptions.  We were children then but now we are adults who will become more and more responsible for the fate of our own community, as for our own life.  Not surprisingly, the expectations held by different societies, even in the same nation, reveal vast differences due to their own value interpretations.  Those differences are also due to the existence of different assumptions as to how those beliefs and their attendant expectations must be satisfied or fulfilled.   

Criteria for Fulfillment.  For every expectation there are measurable criteriathat demonstrate the fulfillment for that expectation.  To check the moral validity of a measurable criterion, it is necessary to validate it against the three primary values.  For a socially sustainable morality to become a functional part of a community or society, measurable outcomes must demonstrate how expectations are to be fulfilled; and, cross-validated against the seven values. 

For example, in the beliefof universal education being beneficial, we would expectthat graduating students would measurably prove that higher education relates positively to socioeconomic indicators such as better health, longer lifetimes, greater earning income, and whose children also experience the same outcomes.  If that expectation proves to be true, then each of these indicators offers individuals the ability to improve their quality of life, and to develop and growinto their innate potential equallyas those who already have those quality of life indicators.