Clarifying Values Can Help Reform Politics

The Capital Times - Guest Column

There is a new spiritual movement afoot in Madison, and it’s 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. Editor Rabbi Michael Lerner, a renowned social theorist and theologian has recently written a book, The Left Hand of God --Taking Back Our Community From the Religious Right.

In June 2006 a group met at Unity of Madison to organize an NSP chapter here. The NSP is intended as an alternative to the political Right, and what it calls “the ethos of selfishness, materialism and cynicism.” (see: www.nsp.wisconsinwi.us/)

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.

There are five value comparisons that have been used extensively in cultural studies and to contrast 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.

I would like to see a statewide 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, not to mention 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.
Also 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 his 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. 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.

It is hoped that 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.

William R. Benedict lives in Madison. For more on the local NSP chapter, contact Beth Wortzel at 233-0241.