People throw around the idea of “core values” with a bit of pride injected. We have been told that we should be “proud” because we believe this or that. But what exactly is a “core value” and why do some people have different core values than others?
The Origins of Core Values
My theory: core values start out as reactive responses to negative past events. If someone steals from you, you might adopt honesty as a core value. If you grew up in frequent danger, you will value safety. If you are disrespected, you will value respect. We develop strategies to avoid recurrence of bad events, which is understandable. Over time, as our survival strategies become routine and fade into the background, we encounter a reason to explain our behavior. Hence we formalize our core values. If you ask anyone why they believe what they do, I’ll wager you will be hard put to find anyone who can give an answer that doesn’t begin with a story about something bad that happened (though not necessarily to that person directly).
I theorize that groups form shared core values in basically the same way as individuals, but with some additional twists added in. For instance, families develop shared core values because of something that happened to someone in the family. Stories change over time, and the original meaning becomes lost or distorted. Sometimes the stories become so misshapen that no living person remembers what actually happened. Shared stories can be formalized as core values or lurk beneath the surface as unconscious superstitions.
When Superstitions Gain The Force Of Law
One of my all-time favorite books is The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Duhigg tells the story of The London King’s Cross Fire that left 37 people dead. The subway station’s personnel had developed a rigid work culture where people were expected to stay in their lanes. Workers who tried to point out problems that didn’t fall under their job descriptions (such as unaddressed fire hazards and a lack of fire preparedness) were usually reprimanded and ignored. The culture had come into place for what was at one time a good reason. Staff members lost focus on their jobs and chaos. Management instilled a work culture where people were conditioned to do only their assigned job duties and nothing else. The rest is history.
The King’s Cross Fire is an extreme example, but the same phenomenon shows up everywhere. By consciously engaging with our past history, we can individually and collectively transform reactive patterns into forward-looking principles. We need to embrace the totality of the past, good and bad. We also need a way to test our beliefs against objective reality and decide consciously what we will carry into the future and what we will leave in the past. Easier said than done, but doable.
The Role Of Incentives
I don’t think that the ability to resist financial pressure is a definitive measure of moral virtue. There is certainly a difference between the sellout who always takes the quick buck and the one who stands on principle at a high financial cost, but there’s more going on beneath the surface. In today’s world, there’s a lot of virtue signaling. There are a multitude of deceptive strategies available for appearing to take the high road while masking the flow of money or concealing one’s true motives. Sometimes, the PR opportunity of publicly refusing a paycheck as a show of virtue will pay dividends down the road. It’s often hard to know the real operating incentives that drive other people’s choices. But, we do know our own motives as individuals. If we start by being accountable to ourselves, we can then gain more leverage with which to hold others accountable.
The Vision Of The Ideal Self
We each need to ask ourselves: “what moral principles would I stand by, even in the face of death, if I were acting with integrity?” I placed a qualifier at the end of the last sentence because no one acts with integrity all of the time, so we need to acknowledge that there is and always will be a difference between the ways we want to behave and the ways we actually behave. We will not be our ideal selves, because as we become better as people, we begin to envision being even better. By design, we were not meant to live up to our own standards for ourselves. When we begin to believe we have reached the pinnacle, we become narcissistic and self-serving, and we begin to spiral downward.
Here are a few questions to ponder in the development of your core values:
- What do I hold sacred in life?
- What do I believe is worth dying for?
- When did I begin to believe what I believe?
- Why do I believe what I believe?
- Is my belief based on objective reality or my personal opinions?
- Are others deserving of negative moral judgment if they believe the opposite? If so, by what authority do I make the claim to be in the right?
- In the past 24 hours, was I behaving consistently with my core values, or was I defaulting to my familiar patterns?
- What can I do in the next 24 hours to act with greater integrity with respect to what I say I believe?
You may come up with better questions. As always, the goal is to make more conscious choices today than I made yesterday.
