Cross posted at Street Prophets.
Value systems, and their apparent inadequacies, seem to be at the heart of the problems that humanity is currently struggling with. Their diversity yet ubiquity amongst every human community means that they're probably here to stay. Yet their incompatibilities create the friction and heat of violence and conflict, somewhat undermining the notion of these phenomena as being "valuable". This post is in inquiry into value systems, about how we approach and deal with value systems, while introducing what may be a rather interesting, if not novel, new value system I've been working on for some time: Poemworld (Click on image to magnify).
Why do we believe the things we do? Why SHOULD we believe the things we do? What should we believe? Why do we DO the things we do? What is the often honored-in-the-breach relationship between our professed values and manifest acts, i.e. between our words and our deeds, our walk and our talk? And why are we yet quite often willing to kill over value system differences? How can some people use their value systems to dominate others, or to justify killing, or disenfranchising, or firing another?
These are just a nearly random sample of the kinds of questions an inquiry into value systems can generate. The very idea of a value system is itself quite intriguing. Could one build such a thing? Or is the authentic item only transmitted by prophetic vision? How would you know when you have one? The self-referential nature of value systems pops up again - don't you need a value system to evaluate a value system? And is it even appropriate to use the word "nature" in this context regarding value?
The notion of value systems also seems to contains some rather interesting qualities and challenges. For example, how do we evaluate value systems? Wouldn't that require a value system in itself? Can we create or choose our own value systems or are they only transmitted from God, or society, or our parents? Can we change our value systems, as conversion or values clarification attempt, or are they "hard-wired"? Are value systems about ends (teleology), means (instrumentalism, pragmatism) or both? Are value systems subjective or objective or both or neither? One can examine the component words, "value" and "system" for further questions which are already part and parcel of philosophy, theology, axiology, etc. Why "value"? What is the status of "value" itself? Is there, in fact, a singular "value" or are there only "values" plural? The invocation of "fact" raises the whole issue of the "fact-value dichotomy", a particularly Western way of looking at value. Why should "value" present itself as a "system"? Is value an "integrated whole," like a system? Is so, why? If not, why not and how then does value manifest itself or selves? Value systems get weird fast.
But I think that one can usefully grapple with the notion. I want to explore some ideas that I've found helpful in pursuing my own value system, Poemworld, with a little bit of the back story around my own effort.
First of all, I must reveal myself as a methodological naturalist by inclination, with just a touch of the mystical, or my experience of my own ignorance, to keep me both humble and wondering. In this framework, just as we all have a language faculty (discounting pathological examples) that is an evolutionary and genetic inheritance, so I believe, along with folks like Noam Chomsky, that we all have a moral-ethical faculty which is also a product of genetics and evolution. If you've had the opportunity to watch young children on a playground, you'll see many more instances of cooperative or empathetic interactions than competitive and aggressive ones (even amongst American children, I submit!). The linguistic and moral-ethical faculties are in turn part of a broader, deeper human nature. As parts of a natural system, they can be studied, theorized about and even experimented upon, as is currently the case, e.g. experimental philosophy.
I use this argument to address the question of how we can assess or evaluate (judge) value systems. I propose that we use our inherited, built-in, though inarticulated, natural human value system. This makes "man the measure of all things," as Protagoras said, at least regarding value systems. But the methodological naturalist framework is a little more useful in dealing with the radical relativism of Protaoras. The principles of a natural human value system should be fairly constant and stable across the species, though superficial differences can be induced by the setting of certain parameters in different ways. But to invoke a "universal grammar" of human morality, ethics and civics will hopefully not be in and of itself controversial.
Borrowing further from my methodological naturalist tradition, I use "Occam's Razor" as a design criterion. Occam's Razor mandates simplicity and elegance in theory wherever possible. This provides a useful tool in cutting through the thicket of the extraneous and unnecessary and getting to the heart of the matter.
Personally, my own pursuit of a value system was motivated by, amongst other things, the desire to create a "bullshit filter," an honorable idea advocated earlier by punk rock band Crass. I began to realize that the value system I had been indoctrinated with, standard patriotic Americanistic chauvinism, was at variance with the truth, much less value itself, and was pretty harmful to my life and happiness. I started to look elsewhere while at the same time performing something of a value audit on my received white male Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americanism, to see what there was worth salvaging. So yet another approach I use is that of an art connoisseur - I know what I like. But borrowing from my rationalist Enlightenment tendencies, I like to figure out why I like what I like.
These and other approaches are how I began, over 20 years ago in the March of 1987, to create Poemworld. Other hugely significant influences included most profoundly American philosopher and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced "purse") and his architectonic philosophical speculation that a complete philosophy could be built out of aesthetics, ethics and logic; American philosopher Robert Nozick, his book The Examined Life and his notion of "non-coercive philosophy"; Noam Chomsky's linguistics and cognitive science on the one hand and his political writing on the other; and British literary theorist and critic Terry Eagleton, whose resonant impact literally helped to "shape" Poemworld into what it is today. Eagleton also provides the quote which explains my very motivation in writing this post, from his luminous The Meaning of Life (2007):
Should the lonely Protestant spirit groping fearfully in the dark be a cause for concern for those who believe that life is what you make it? Yes and no. No, in the sense that making your life meaningful, rather than expecting its meaning to be pre-given, is a perfectly plausible idea. Yes, in so far as it ought to serve as a sober warning that to shape the meaning of one's life for oneself cannot be a matter of fashioning just any meaning that takes your fancy. It does not exempt you from justifying whatever it is that makes your life meaningful at the bar of common opinion. You cannot just say "Personally, I find that the meaning of my life lies in asphyxiating dormice" and hope to get away with it.
Thus, I submit Poemworld for your consideration, and hopefully comment.
Finally, a few remarks. Yes, my real name is Bruce B. Banner. I am not The Incredible Hulk (but how about that World War Hulk this summer!) I am a union officer in Austin, Texas and you can read a news story including me here to verify my existence. If I've whetted your appetite for this kind of thing, check out my blog, http://poemworld.blogspot.com/ for more about Poemworld. And in close, I would like to stipulate that I'm probably wrong. That's what makes me reasonable.
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