How do values and needs relate?

image credit: https://irfankhawajaphilosopher.files.wordpress.com

There is a lot of talk around values in the GCC. Values – as the word suggests – are important. So what are values? It turns out the scholar Shalom Schwartz* has researched this extensively and the image above illustrates his findings. (more )
So there seem to be sets of values that are common in any given culture. Universal human values.

What struck me is that this image shows distinctive social oriented values and egocentric values. That corresponds with the distinction I learned from Clare Graves* namely  the pendulum between self expression and adaption to outside challenges in the subsequent levels of existence he described

That made me wonder if the values and needs would match up. If this model and the levels of maturity Graves distilled from his data validate each other. As a layman, I suspect this could be true. I am not an academic researcher, but I think coming from different angles, they approached a shared truth.

It would be interesting to use the above image as a reference the next time we talk about values… What do you think?

Patterns of life

Today’s society demonstrates the destructive combination of absolute private property rights and limitless resources exploitation (including ‘human resources’!). We seem to be heading towards self destruction.
Many of the ‘woke’ human population try to figure out solutions for the mess we got our species into. Never before has a species voluntarily been able to constraint their natural tendency to expand and grow. Growth is a natural pattern, but we now have reached the end of our ‘petri dish’ and risk to die off as the result of the effects of polluting the very domain that has fed us for so long.

There are hopeful possibilities though, that are undervalued. Humans have always been adapting to change and more importantly to each other. We possess a huge ability to copy behaviour that seems successful. Together with the current technical possibilities to know what behaviour that could be, we have the possibility to experiment and learn faster than ever. And find the new patterns for survival.

My current guess is that those patterns will be situated in the relational domain. In what happens when two or more humans interact. Despite it’s very fundamental nature, there has been little to no scientific attention to it’s effect. Only this last century has seen academic disciplines emerge studying and researching this. Social skills are not part of todays standard curriculum.

My sense is that exactly this underdeveloped domain holds the promise of better love and understanding between humans of all kind. And the good news is, that behaviour is not as easy to monopolise or alienate as a private right or property. So successful social behaviour will be copied and spread like wild fire.

So while going about my daily life and every day challenges, I will filter for patterns, even more than before. Generative social patterns and their dark counterparts.