Re: Values LO1628

Ron2785@eworld.com
Tue, 13 Jun 1995 14:59:53 -0700

Replying to LO1617 --

John: Just saw your reply re values: Another quick, perhaps
Western-style, response, but sans bullets. Sorry.

Again about canonical sets: I managed to spend six elementary- school
years at a parochial school, where we had all sorts of "stuff" drilled
into us. (I didn't realize until much, much later, actually, how elegant
some of that "stuff" was -- but that's for another discussion.) Among the
items were pages and pages and pages of disputacious commentary on what
were presumed to be canons of all kinds -- the bible, the Talmud, which
itself is commentary, etc.

My point here is that ambiguity, for which I'm personally grateful, is
virtually built in to our lives; when we (and I mean we) can reach some
kind of mutual understanding, or homeostasis, or can at least respect each
others' arguments -- at that point I believe we have the beginnings of
something like a civilization. So. I still don't understand why -- or
even how -- a "canonical set" should be or can be universally agreed to.

As for the cases you offer of unarticulated information, I can offer
another one -- the New Coke. The point, I think, with all these examples
is a relatively simply one: ask the wrong questions, you get the wrong
answers. For instance: In Cleveland, rather than ask potential passengers
to choose between two alternatives (which would almost inevitably generate
a kind of politically correct answer) the questioners should perhaps have
found out more about,e.g., the uses of transportation for their target
market; behaviors that are independent of one means of transportation than
another; etc. I don't know, I wasn't there. But I strongly suspect that
uncovering the hidden dialogues, a la Chris Argyris, would inevitably have
been more successful in getting at something approaching reality.

As to the discussion of virtues vs. values: I guess we're inching our way
into political territory here, but I find the whole concept of "family
values," as it's currently being played out, to be laughable. Whose
notion of family? Tolstoy's? Faulkner's? Woolf's? Aeschylus'? (Remember
Agamemnon, his lovely wife Clytemnestra, and their two charming kids
Electra and Orestes? Not to mention poor Iphigenia, who was, I suppose, an
example of what you need to do in order to make an omelette.) I don't know
that virtues were ever "understandable and unchanging over time," as
Gertrude Himmelfarb apparently asserted (I believe that's who you're
referring to regarding the CSPAN show). For those untouched by these
"virtues" (e.g., not victimized by the "virtues" of the Inquisition, as a
for-instance), it's comforting to draw the wagons around and to play
"let's pretend"; for the rest of us, I wonder....

Finally (at last!) pretty much every argument, discussion, what-have-you,
can be turned into a reductio ad absurdum: organizations are guilty of a
hell of a lot, with or without values, virtues, etc., but to jump from
that to Hitler is a breathtaking leap.

--
Ron Mallis
12 Chestnut Street
Boston,  MA 02108
617-723-8362
ron2785@eworld.com