The Importance of The Core Values

   The significance of values is that every decision we make, is based on our values. Values are the motivators in the decision making process.

   There are many sets of values under which society's institutions operate. And there are many cultures with values that conflict with those of other cultures. And they often conflict with values held by other institutions within the same culture or society. And in turn, these multifarious and conflicting values, being also motivators, leading to goals, give our institutions confused and conflicting sets of moral and ethical standards.
   What might some of these values-goals be? "research physics and the natural world." "make a profit." "help cure patients." "educate our children." "fund the arts." "build more housing." "earn money." "

   We see how these values/goals become agendas in isolation, those involved with each one not considering the greater good of society, and considering only today and not the future - not their grandchildren and their grandchildrens' grandchildren. This shortsightedness is contagious. Our institutions have become feral. They see themselves as something separate and apart from the society within which they exist, and that they are not responsible for what goes on in that society. Whatever is not within their immediate purview is an "externality", not their responsibility. Not one, including elected governments who are supposed to oversee everything for the greater good, is in fact working for the greater good, for the preservation and continued evolution of our communities, states, nations or world civilization. Instead, each one is pushing its own agenda without consideration of its place in the overall scheme of things. And too many of them, and of the people who compose them, are looking for egregious revenues and wealth without consideration for the burden that supplying that imposes upon the people and on the society and economy that must supply it. This has trickled down to individuals, too. We see ourselves and the circles within which we operate as separate and distinct from what goes on outside them. We see others in other circles as competitors, even enemies, instead of recognizing them as fellow sons and daughters of God.

   But the value-motivators that our institutions and the individuals who compose them strive for are secondary or tertiary - derived values. They are derived from the unstated root or core values implicitly behind them. These values are universal to humanity and irreducible. A discussion of values leads us to them.

"Why does you institution seek to make a profit?"
"To have money!"
"Why do you want to have money?"
(After the blank stare...)
"So we can afford to buy more things and do more things."
"And what is the point to that?"
"To live better!"
"Ah! So the point to the company making a profit is to enable a better quality of life."
"Um, well... Of course! It goes without saying."

   Now we have hit on an implicit, unstated core value. Wanting a good quality of life needs no further explanation. It is universal. Everyone wants it. We can start to home in on a very few universal, timeless values that everyone shares and everyone throughout history in every age has shared, regardless of their culture, race, sex or religion.

   These basic values can of course be described in many ways with various words. Words are specific to language and are chosen to convey an impression, a connotation. I myself have stated they are "core values", "universal values", "primary values", "root values" and "basic values" - motivators. Using various words conjures up a more complete picture in the mind.

The values are being presented as "The Seven Core Values" in three categories:
* "Life"
* the "primary" core values,
* and the "secondary" core values.

   Life is over all and above all. Decisions are first made to preserve and maintain one's life, and then to care for others as applicable. Then the primary values have been stated as three:

* Equality
* Growth
* Quality of Life

   Here is a link to a website about these root values, also under the video: [7corevalues.org]


   Civilizations start with primitive equality when no one has much, and grow with time as the citizens continually seek to improve their quality of life. People need opportunities to grow into the potentials which they brought into life when they were born. Living is growing. As society grows and evolves it must concern itself with providing all with a comfortable quality of life wherein the equality that enables such opportunities for growth for everyone will become manifest.

   The secondary values make us not just calculators of legalistic fairness but truly human. And this group is especially where I would say that one might replace a word or words with others and come up with very similar meanings and connotations. However, the three words chosen seem very good:

* Empathy
* Compassion
* Love: Love in general for all, for humanity, for life

   To be able to continue into an indefinite future, civilizations and all their institutions and organizations must become imbued with the secondary attributes as well as the primary ones. At the Nuremberg trials after World War Two, in hearing the matter-of-fact testimonies about some of the horror and death the Nazi regime had unleashed, the prosecutor noted that if he was to define "evil", he would call it 'an absence of empathy.'

   Even the higher apes recognize these values to some extent. Who then does not have these values embedded in their DNA?: Our institutions. In spite of the people who compose our institutions having them, unless the core values are primal in the organization's charter, they are lost under the derived values. Making a profit above all else regardless of consequences to society and to most of its individuals is generally destructive to equality, quality of life and opportunities for growth. So is growing any institution beyond what the overall good of society warrants.


Here we'll put in a subtitle:


DIRECTED VERSUS UNDIRECTED DEVELOPMENT

   So far, no society or civilization has ever attempted to direct its development. Societal development has been UNdirected. And we must note that every civilization in the world has blossomed, prospered for perhaps 100 to 400 years, and then fallen. They all thought they were eternal, but in fact they wandered without direction and mostly they grew and grew aimlessly until they had outgrown and ruined their environment. It has been said that civilizations start with a forest and end with a desert. The decline and crash of today's global civilization is well underway.
   When one decides to build an office building, one first plans it out. The architect is directed to furnish the plans. These are given to the general contractor. Then it is built step by step starting with laying down the foundation. Time is allowed to finish each step before the next tradespeople are called in. A society is far more important than a building. Does it not deserve to be planned out? Should the foundation not be laid out and in place before the plumbers and the roofers and the interior decorators are called in?

   These seven core values and the resulting ethical and moral standard that will develop from them are the underpinnings, the foundation, of a new and higher culture, a sustainable civilization. When we are making decisions based on the universal values of being human, and when the next generation has understood these and taken them to heart, then we will have laid the foundation for directed social development as we lay foundations for buildings today. Planned, engineered organizations and social institutions that can sustain themselves and sustain society into the far future can be erected on this solid foundation.

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