Values and how we change them

Everybody talks about values. Politicians talk about "family values", ministers about "religious values". Most of us have a general idea that our "values" represent our preferred choices, or the choices preferred by our culture or religion. When a choice arises we expect to act according to the relevant value.

We know that there are times when we make the "wrong" choice, in the sense that we act not according to our professed value, but according to some other priority or need. The man who steals money from his employer may know that he is "doing wrong" in spite of his professed belief that "theft is always wrong". His behavioral value is not consistent with his professed verbal values. In his mind, however, he may feel that he "has a right" to steal from the employer because he feels "exploited". So we can see that our values can exist in the form of behavioral choices as well as in our thoughts and words, and that the three may not be the same.

Values can exist in three forms: cognitive, verbal and behavioral. We can think of making a particular kind of choice (cognitive value); we can tell one another what our values are or should be (verbal values); our actual choices reveal behavioral values.

Many times we are surprised by the actual choices that we make when the time comes. They may not have been the choices we thought we would make. They may not have been the choices we told others we would make. Our values on the same topic often conflict with one another. We notice another form of values conflict when we discover that one belief (or cognitive value) clashes with another value. For instance, a Christian might believe in love and respect for others, and then is placed in a situation where he/she has to make a choice about hurting others (such as in battle). Someone enjoying a steak dinner might suddenly recall how cows are treated and find it difficult to finish the meal.

It's interesting that we can live with conflicting values for years without even noticing that they conflict until something causes us to pay attention. Then we recognize that we have to decide which value has priority. Growing up seems to me largely to be a process of examining and re-examing our values and rearranging their priorites so that they are more consistent.

When we assign a new priority to a value, we do so on the cognitive level. We decide mentally that in the future we will behave differently when the opportunity arises. Many times we actually do what we have planned. We can tell a friend what our new values are. So it seems clear that cognitive value changes can change behavioral and verbal values.

During the Korean war and after a number of studies demonstrated that when behavioral changes are forced, even at gunpoint, the cognitive values shifted gradually in the same direction. Men forced to make speeches favoring communism at gunpoint were found later to have shifted their beliefs (cognitive values) in the direction of the speeches they had been forced to make. When buying a car after much internal (and external) debate about the virtues of one model over another, once the behavioral choice to buy a particular car is made our values immediately change. Suddenly we see all the good reasons for buying this car and the negative ones become unimportant. We tell our friends what a good idea it was. We think we have made an excellent choice. Festinger called this resolution of cognitive conflict "cognitive dissonance", and this theory has long demonstrated that behavioral values and choices modify verbal and cognitive ones.

How we behave can change our values. We can't lie without lowering our value of honesty. We can't steal without changing in the direction of believing that theft is "not so bad". Not only do our values determine our choices, but our choices determine our values. We change to fit the choices that we actually make. When we choose work over family time or intimacy, we begin shifting to actually value work more than family time or intimacy. When we choose to spend time in an online relationship instead of with a friend or intimate companion, we change all our values in the corresponding direction.

Every choice changes our values. Even purely cognitive choices change the other value systems. Every choice counts. Every behavior reinforces the value associated with it. Every action or inaction has psychological consequences. What we do becomes who we are.

Detachment versus non-attachment

Followers of a particular religion tend, over time, to emphasize and even exaggerate tenets of their belief. I imagine that this "enhancement" of their belief system also helps emphasize the stature and importance of their religion and thus of themselves. In some cases, though, the exaggeration simply an exaggeration and simplification of the original philosophy until it's more easily understood by less educated members.

For instance, Buddha demonstrated philosophically that "clinging" to transitory and impermanent things led to misery and sorrow. This applies both to material objects and to beliefs or people. He didn't say we couldn't value them or even love them, only that clinging to them as if we had some permanent right to them predictably led to misery. It is important in Buddhist philosophy that we recognize that nothing, absolutely nothing, lasts. However, many Buddhists over the years have taken that philosophy to an extreme position: they believe we should not "own" or have anything. They avoid personal relationships, families, falling in love, being loyal, having possessions, and so on. This attitude is exactly identical with that of the small child who says "I just don't want it if I can't keep it". They try to insulate themselves from suffering by avoiding life and its unavoidable pains. Old age, sickness and death can't be avoided, and they bring with them the pain of loss. These events don't require us to suffer as well, and it is suffering that the Buddha taught that we can totally avoid.

Total detachment from everything results in a life style which is devoid of commitment, connection, and pleasure. Obviously if you can't keep pleasure or joy, you will miss them when you don't have them. The reality is that you can enjoy things and treasure them more when you know beyond doubt that you will not be able to keep them. If you love someone, at best one of you will lose the other. To think that to avoid the pain of loss you should stop loving them now is the grossest possible misinterpretation of Buddhist thought. Non-attachment is healthy; detachment is not.

The reality is that you cannot protect yourself against the pain of loss. It is equally real that you can protect yourself against needless suffering. However, to avoid suffering it isn't necessary to avoid life itself. It matters only that you should recognize the transitory, changing nature of everything and try to enjoy what you can quickly before it is gone forever.

Group values vs. humanist values

For all of recorded history we have struggled with the conflict between our individual values and the values of the group(s) to which we belong. Possibly (or even probably) our need to "belong" to a group stems from our primate ancestry, but we have apparently always have lived, hunted and bred in groups. We have grouped for mutual protection and also for aggression against other groups. History is really about very little other than conflicts between groups and the conflicts between group values and individual human rights.

It's especially interesting that developmental psychology has paid so little attention to the stage of human development in which we are driven by our heritage to form and join groups. Everyone who has raised children has observed this stage, often in dismay, as the child that formerly belonged to the family group suddenly discovers the importance of peer groups. The young person's behavior changes radically as their allegiance, along with their behavioral values and ethics, shift to that of their new group. The new group, essentially peers and slightly older people, may have less mature and reasonable values than those of the family, but certainly has different allegiances, loyalties and conflicts. These peer group values become more important than the family values almost overnight.

We joke about the almost universal excuse "but so-and-so does it" or "all the kids dress that way/cut (or don't cut) their hair that way/wear pins (or bones) in their nose/get tattoos". It doesn't matter which group norm to which they are suddenly adhering. The norm primarily (or even only) exists in order to mark the new group as "different" from other groups, in other words, to help form the group's boundaries. So, naturally, it's different from the norms of the family. The importance of this stage is frequently under-rated. There is NOTHING more important to the young person in this stage than "belonging", and they are even sometimes willing to die to prove their right to be a member.

We don't seem to outgrow this stage, either. Groups continue to develop styles of dress or behavior that set them apart from other groups. Part of being a loyal group member is to disparage other groups, which of course sets the stage for escalations into violence. As human beings (as most of us are) we find it easy to accept individuals AS INDIVIDUALS. We do NOT find it easy to accept them as a member of a different group. We hate hurting or killing individuals. We seem to have no problem with hurting or killing group members. We wouldn't hesitate to assist or comfort a hurt individual, and also most of us wouldn't hesitate to machine-gun their group if it threatened the survival of ours. The "evils" of war are simply the result of the discrepancy between specific group values and individual, humanist ones.

Much of military (and some religious) indoctrination is designed specifically to insure that people who are inducted, sometimes involuntarily, into the group become loyal, full-fledged members, ready to fight and die for their new group. When religions or political groups do this, we call it "brainwashing". When the military does it, we call it "boot camp".

My point is only that group membership and conflict seem to be a universal and basic human trait, which means that no matter how we try to change things, conflict and war will continue, and no matter how much as individuals we deplore that fact, as group members we will continue to support it.