Let’s Talk Values

There is a new spiritual movement afoot in Madison that is committed to reforming our political system. It is not focused around any single issue. Instead, it is asking the American people to participate in a national value-clarification discussion. The Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) is an off-shoot of the Jewish Interfaith movement magazine, Tikkun. The editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner, is a renowned social theorist and theologian. Lerner has recently written a book, The Left Hand of God --Taking Back Our Community From the Religious Right.

On June 19, 2006 a group met at Unity of Madison and took steps to organize an NSP chapter here in Madison. The NSP is intended as an alternative to the political Right, and what it calls “the ethos of selfishness, materialism and cynicism.” The Tikkun Community believes that the Right’s values, situated in a larger context of fear, have led America into a frantic search for money and power and away from a life of hope, love, kindness and generosity. The nature of the NSP’s spirituality is one that is based on fundamental values.

There are five value comparisons that have been used extensively in cultural studies and to contrast the values of the American corporation sub-culture with our larger society. In the following list, corporate values are listed first and followed by family values: Discourage feeling expression vs. encourage feeling expression; Self interest vs. community interest; Treat a person based on a rule or principal vs. your relationship to the person; Treat a person based on her achievement vs. on her total attributes; respond to a person’s needs on a very narrow basis, i.e. employer/employee vs. responding to a person’s diverse and diffuse needs, i.e. mother/child or husband/wife.

By introducing and discussing these above values this writer hopes to begin a larger State of Wisconsin discussion about what America’s core values are and should be. Are corporate values taking root and perhaps even beginning to dominate our family and larger community culture, and if so, is this good for America? What impact is the American corporate culture having on our global economy and world peace? Finally, our readers may want to use these five value comparisons to further clarify their own family and community values.

Based on these five value alternatives we can see that corporate America’s culture requires that in work or business dealings employees generally are encouraged to repress emotional expression; that the corporation’s principal interest is its own welfare and the bottom line; that business activity will be based on rules and only secondarily on personal relationships. That the company will treat their employees principally on the basis of how they perform or achieve rather than on who they are; that the employer will restrict their interaction with employees more narrowly around job descriptions and matters of business. Finally, the company’s relationship to their employees is segmented and circumscribed.

In stark contrast, a community or family culture is largely based on very different values that allow for a broad range of impulse and emotional expression. Interdependence is valued and members’ concerns for others extend into caring and love for one another. Here a family member should expect to find supportive primary relationships. While a person’s achievement is recognized, the person is also rewarded for a wide range of personal and social attributes. There is the promise of many diffuse relationships and multiple human needs are met.

It is useful to examine these five core value alternatives in the context of our major social institutions, i.e. government, church, courts and the family. Part of our discussion needs to consider the consequences to our country when economic-centered values begin to infiltrate and replace our other traditional institutional values. Regretfully, I believe this is what is happening.

It’s clear emotional expression in the family is being blunted and often ignored resulting in ever increasing depression and violence in our society. It can be seen in an ever increasing culture of selfishness and materialism. It can also be seen in our growing homeless population and in the denial of economic entitlements for our poorest and neediest children. It can be seen in our national educational reform program (NCLB) which values achievement and ever higher competitive testing compliance more than rewarding moral character building and life-long social and emotional competencies. Finally, it can be seen in the disintegration of our civic life and in our increasing insulation and isolation from our neighbors.

A 1995-2005 comparative ten year study found that the average American when asked how many friends they had now reported having twenty fewer friends, and when asked how many “best friends” changed their answer from three down to only two. Many youngsters when asked this same question now often list only “virtual” on-line friendships. Studies also tell us that more and more adults report less and less time for family, civic and other community involvement. All trends seem to be telling us that our jobs and consumer-related activities are squeezing more and more time out of our family and leisure hours.

Hopefully an on-going discussion of these values will soften and quiet the now loud stereotypical rehashing of the same old left-right issues and allow for a more in depth and rational dialogue.

No Need to Worry!

Letter to the Editor – Wisconsin State Journal

Phil Brinkman’s Wednesday article on the Georgia Thompson verdict reported that state union officials were concerned that state prosecutors were “over-reaching” by charging Thompson under laws normally cited in bribery and fraud cases.

The unions reportedly were concerned that “the routine lawful performance of their job may put them potentially at risk for similar criminal prosecutions.” This writer, partly facetiously, partly cynically, and partly very seriously, believes that they need not worry about this eventuality, inasmuch as big corporations and unions routinely assess each of our state legislators’ capacity to deliver for them, and then blatantly give them big money for their next re-election campaign. If readers wish to see just how much such corporations give your legislators for favors, they can simply click on the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s link to access its extensive data base: wisdc.org.

Pop Culture Story

Since my retirement I have been spending a lot of my time working for campaign finance reform. How can I help average Joe and Sally citizen regain control of their government? How can we take back our state government from the control of big corporations? I continued to be dismayed at how few citizens, in spite of the recent legislature corruption, still have precious little time to contribute to this cause.

This morning I read how much time and money parents spent trying to protect their children from our popular culture which has now completely taken over our country. (See: ”Non-Drinking Fun For Grads” by Kate Schuman, Wisconsin State Journal 6/5/06). It soon became clear that a significant component of the parents’ planning strategy was to keep their older teens safely confined and strictly supervised within their public high school during a significant portion of their graduation-day celebration. As a former professional institutional youth worker, who knows something about program structure and programming, I was truly impressed with how creatively and thoroughly these parents were in helping the school plan their child’s graduation prom night.

This story made it abundantly clear how parents perceive some of the dangers lurking in their child’s environment ---a culture of alcohol, drugs, cars, young romance and their feelings of invincibility. You may rightly be thinking, “So what’s new?” What is new I think is their increasing feeling of powerlessness, fear and anxiety. Already ever and ever more extended both at home and at work, out of both love and fear, they give of themselves so unselfishly and lovingly. After giving and caring for so long and so deeply for 17 or 18 years, their child’s graduation day certainly is not the time to let down.

What I don’t understand is why more of our retirees, singles and parents, don’t allocate at least a little bit of up-stream time and effort toward working to protect their children and their grandchildren, to take back control of their communities from corporate exploitation and greed. Instead, as citizens and parents, we become more and more complicit and dependent upon the corporate backed and commercially-supported popular culture. Like in our State government, the corporations have literally moved all of what has now become “standard” staples and corporate commodities right into our school houses. This was so graphically seen Schuman’s story.

Her story illustrated, I think, just how desperate and co-dependent parents have become on our pop culture to help them seduce, manage and control their children. The story included the fact that the parents raised over $16,000 dollars to hold one medium size high school prom. While at the same time less that 8% of our citizens check off 1% of their income tax to pay for public campaign financing, which if fully implemented, would take our state legislature back and give it to the average tax paying citizen. In reading this story I had to wonder how much pop culture values and choices has now replaced old time and trusted child raising virtues of building in their child trust, self-discipline, responsibility, self-reliance and common sense.

The $10,000 dollar gift giving bonanza, including Target’s gift to every graduate, clearly illustrates just how much our popular culture is synonymous with our commercial culture and all of its trappings, i.e., “Deal or No Deal, case cubic, iPods, futons, play stations and DVD players. These were just some of the gifts that were given to the graduates. As one student graduate aptly put it, “With all these prizes you might as well spend a night at school.” If all the money raised and spent, the expensive gifts, the corporate sponsor, are not enough evidence to show how the corporations have now hooked both our youth and their parents I don’t know what is.

Certainly the ever-present, all powerful and impersonal corporate giants, like adopted step-parents, are beginning more and more to make our parents feel ever more fearful and co-dependent on corporate influence. This impotence and powerlessness can be stopped. The people can reclaim their legitimate influence both in their home and in the larger community by getting corporate power and influence out of our State Capitol and our schools NOW.