Three Types of Values: Lofty Goals, Practical Methods and Creative Rewards
Lofty Goals
The 12 Core Values are trying to accomplish many things. The Lofty Goals of our living together in society are Health & Safety, Community, Truth and Productivity.
Ultimately, people seek Health & Safety for themselves and their families, and community structures should also serve that end. There are many types of health including physical, mental and spiritual health. Likewise, there are many types of safety, including personal, workplace and public safety. There is safety in numbers, just as there is community health. People tend to thrive more when they live in community.
Why is Community so important, so essential in the 21st century, when we have the internet and cheap gasoline and global trade? Because things still happen in physical space, here in front of us, where we are breathing. The internet and web have great value as a means of exchange of ideas. Transportation across great distance has great value for trade and import/export of goods and capital. Travel and social media are great ways to visit and share with other communities. But if all of the electronic and transportational things failed tomorrow, our community would still be here. Local is real. We need to focus our investment, our attention, our priority on what is really and truly in front of us.
In this age of vast information, how can we determine and recognize Truth across great distance? Any picture, video, sound or document can be faked perfectly. What can we trust? What can be proven? People and things in front of us, in the real world. Experiences of our own and witnesses that need to live their lives near us. These things earn our trust.
Everyone has the capacity to be productive. Productivity is progress, it is work, it is creation, it is the building of value. People have the inherent desire to be useful, to work, to build, to be productive. Likewise, productivity earns reward, compensation, money based on the value created. Money should come to productivity and be based on productivity. But productivity should be based on reasonable expectations. Productivity should be healthy and safe. It should build muscles and talent and stamina even as it builds bank accounts.
Further, products and services should be useful, desired, demanded by the community in healthy and safe ways. Objects and acts that create self-destruction of the body and mind have no long-term productive place in the community and they should not be encouraged or supported. Any systematic improvement of community health and safety is inherently productive and should be compensated somehow.
Practical Methods
The 12 Core Values promote “give and take” and caution through the Practical Methods of Protection, Opportunities, Respect and Effectiveness.
People need to protect what they consider to be important and essential in the face of the march of progress. Protection is for things that are in danger of being trampled or broken or lost, be they liberties or ideals or property or people not able to protect themselves. We must be empowered to protect our own and what we love and understand, as well as that which cannot protect itself.
Where protection is all about maintaining something, we still need forward motion, work, accomplishment for the community. These all come in the form of Opportunities. Where do we find opportunities? All around us. Opportunities are a renewable resource. Other people create opportunities for us and sometimes we create opportunities for them. No two opportunities are the same, just as no two people are the same. We learn about opportunities in the newspaper, on Craig’s List, on the radio, from our friends or by walking past them on the street. How do we know an opportunity is right for us? Research, thought, consideration and training.
We need self-confidence to attempt to follow an opportunity. We need to believe there is a reasonable chance that we can succeed. Respect is built when we are taken into serious consideration for an opportunity. Likewise, we respect others when they compete admirably for an opportunity. It takes a lot to apply for or interview for a job. Opportunities need to be fair and open to those who are qualified, and not based on privilege or standing. The qualifications earned through knowledge and training and experience are essential. Respect and opportunities should be offered, must be earned, and can be lost. Respect and opportunities are fragile, precarious, and require great care. When used properly, they are incredibly powerful engines of empowerment.
Effectiveness transcends efficiency and productivity because it incorporates individual’s and the community’s best wisdom and understanding of what is truly needed. We need to test ourselves and each other, hold ourselves and each other up to relevant standards in order to assure that our work is effective in making improvements and that it is not destroying anything that we need to protect.
Creative Rewards
The payoff and the joy of fulfillment in the 12 Core Values come in the Creative Rewards of Expression, Service, Love and Innovation.
Expression is the sharing of emotion, logic, reason or faith. It is satisfying because of its connection to emotion. It can be done with love, joy, faith and promise or it can be done in sorrow, despair, anger or anguish. Self-control in expression is a sign of maturity. People have the right to be obnoxious even though it is not desirable. The communities and its members may decide what is obnoxious expression, and will likely act accordingly. But this should not deter people from expressing themselves and pushing boundaries. Perhaps some boundaries need to be pushed in order to express something new and different.
What is the nature of Service? We serve because we are called to serve, through passion or compassion or agreement. We serve through inspiration. Where do these things come from originally? From Love. Whether it’s God’s love for us or our love for others. Likewise, when we invest our time, energy and money into service, we gain more understanding and love for those that we serve. We see and hear and experience the impact of our actions and the gratitude that it inspires in those whom we serve. The world might tell us to serve only ourselves and our own, and that we should always and only be compensated for the service that we do. But what of that? Service is an act of love and love requires no payment in cash. Love grows based on gratitude and knowledge of progress and growth. This is true satisfaction as a result of jobs well done.
Innovation is a unique act of creation, the creation of a process that people haven’t tried or succeeded at before. People should not fear the failure of their attempts at innovation. We need to try new things and fail many times before finding innovations that will take hold. Once innovation creates new, workable, superior solutions, these process improvements are their own works of art, beautiful productive expressions.