On Tue, 25 Jun 1996 Ilfryn Price wrote about values in part -
> It does for me mean that values clashing are not part of a Western
> Reductionist tradition but part of the driving force of evolution and we
> become victims of "the tyranny of the selfish replicator" unless we are
> aware of the fact.
Just a comment that the Bible indicates that the Holy Spirit put a set of
values into each of us. If those "vaules" are the "hows" of our actions,
not goals such as wealth or survival or the environment, our experience
bears this out. People, particularly educated ones, have more disagreement
as to what the values actually are, but we have never found any that
didn't believe that fairness, love, honesty and the like weren't "good"
and their opposites "bad".
> Another way to awareness that I am stuggling with at the moment is to
> recognise that ultimately the individual expresses his or her values
> through their actions [A point made clear for me in recent months by Rol
> for which many thanks Rol] and to enquire how we can build wider social
> value sets that enable the values we might wish to see a society founded
> on. The alternative is to go on letting the values and all the rest of the
> linguistic/ paradigmatic meaning pattern slug it out. That may even be the
> 'best' way but I do not feel optimistic about it.
Unfortunately, most of us do not realize that others interpret our actions
as reflections of our values. We don't realize this because much of our
behavior was developed before we understood, if we ever did, "values".
Mostly, we copy our behavior from what we see around us selecting on some
basis what we like best or what is necessary to conform and reduce
criticism. That our behavior reflects our values never occurs to us,
although that is what each of us does to everyone else.
In a work environment, discussion of values is very effective in improving
performance for just this reason. Actions must be analyzed on the basis of
commonly respected "values" and alternative actions which meet higher
standards must be discussed with the reasons why they are "better". This
practice gets everyone in the act of using their values as their guide to
personal action. If led by a boss, this then becomes the norm and is one
of many elements necessart to excellence.
Regards, Joan
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Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
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