I was in a hurry when I wrote my response to Ron. Not an excuse so much
as an explanation.
Ron gave four "bullets" in his reply to me, which I will (perhaps
erroneously) interpret by some headers, and to which I will respond:
(1) (a) Spurious, Never-Ending Analysis. Yes, I agree with the need to
forego spurious, never-ending analysis.
(b) Let's get on with it. No, I don't agree with that. It's
true that this idea was #1 in Tom Peters Version I. But he's now gone
through two later versions.
One reason you can benefit from a canonical set is that you can
best be understood if, when you are trying to communicate, and when a set
is involved (such as the set of all human values), you are able to choose
from the set, without introducing confusion caused, perhaps, by ambiguity
among the members of the set.
(2) No Problem in Being Asked What You Believe In.
I want to mention three cases involving elicitation of information
concerning what people believe.
CASE I. The Air-Traffic Controllers Strike. After many thousand
air-traffic controllers were fired by Ronald Reagan a few years back, the
Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan became
interested in finding out why so many people were willing to give up their
jobs. In the report that came out, here is the essence of what was found:
The controllers, in the negotiations with management, told what they
valued: bigger pay, fewer hours, less-demanding work rules, etc. What the
ISR found was that these were only unarticulated surrogates for what was
really wanted by the controllers: to be tried as worthy human beings by
the FAA managers.
CASE II. The Japanese scholar Magaroh Maruyama did research on inmates
in prisons. After prolonged research, involving a variety of direct
contacts in one way or another, here is the essenced of what was found:
the inmates became familiar with what the typical social worker wants to
hear when interviewing inmates, and became very skilled in telling them
what they wanted to hear. Maruyama illustrated that the prisoners chose
lies as surrogates for the truth because they had something to gain by lying.
CASE III. Before building a rail line from Cleveland to the airport,
passengers were asked if they would choose rail instead of cars, when the
line came into use. Having got the answer that well over half of those
responding would use rail, the rail line was designed and installed with
that level of use in mind. The use actually found in practice was much
less than what was articulated. Apparently those who responded were
using a surrogate for their real value, which could have been to expand
the alternatives from which they could choose.
(3) No Clear Distinction Between Virtues and Values. As I said in my
earlier communication, an emeritus lady prof of history from City U of
New York talked on CSPAN about this distinction, and how she felt the
change had undermined family values and helped promote the kind of
behaviors that are now widespread. I can't possibly present her argument
nearly as well as she did, but here is one essence: Virtues were
understandable and unchanging over time, values are ambiguous and
variable or relativistic. (I am not arguing for or against promoting
this distinction in society. I am discussing effective communication, as
a means of building cultural attributes.)
(4) Consensus helps companies produce good products and open up new
markets. Yes, that is how Hitler and his buddies arrived at their approach
to getting expanded space and other values.
Consensus is not as important as what the consensus is about.
I suspect that the population of Germany in the thirties and forties had
a lot of trouble with ambiguities in values, partly because of
unarticulated things with surrogates, etc.
My response to (4) doesn't go anywhere, most likely. But I put it in
here because sometimes things are not as readily dealt with in the
western cowboy style as they are through scholarship. Or as Bill
Livingston would put it, "Ready, fire, aim" is not necessarily the
appropriate sequence.
-- JOHN WARFIELD Jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu