A Question of Values

Economics, the ‘dismal science’ as I heard it called, has been something with which I have tried to have as little contact as possible. I vaguely classified it in my hierarchy of interests along with foreign languages, or algebra, two of my other areas of keen disinterest.

Perhaps this is a little unfair. For instance, E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful struck a wonderfully resonant chord when I first read it many years ago. He was talking about economics, yes, but his discussion contained a value: people mattered.

Now that conditions that are consequences of human use are forcing the issues of Earth sustainability, now that differences in religion are mixing with rising human populations and power, and since the effects of civilization on the quality of life of human beings is increasingly suspect, it is time to bring values back to the equation. Not those like ‘prestige’, ‘purity’, or ‘country’ that business, religion and politics has surreptitiously (and blatantly) fed to an innocent and gullible public, but deeper, more lasting, human values.

It is forwarded by champions of ecological care of our Earth such as Arnie Naess that to ignore the methodology and reasoning beneath economics as a science is to face one’s own – and the planet’s – future with a dismal handicap. It is not that economics is ‘bad’ (even if I grew up shunning it as if it was), but that it has been associating with ‘bad influences’. Well, ‘bad’ in the sense that the consequences are eroding the quality of life for human beings, as well as the entire planet.

And perhaps I should exercise some reservation, and qualify that those influences with which economics has been associating are not really ‘bad’, but misguided.

Without a deep and conscious value system of one’s own, it is impossible to direct the consequences towards ends that reflect such values. Economics, and politics are clear examples. Economics values equations, for instance, and thus tries quantify and provide rationale for human projects, however not based on such matters as peacefulness or wellbeing. Indeed, economists generally (though there are standouts such as Schumacher) avoid discussions of value, as if they would muddy the clarity of their work.

Politics embraces values, yes, values such as ‘winning’ or ‘America’ or ‘democracy’ when using America as an example. However, these values are merely means to ends, which are the unexpressed deeper values, such as ‘winning in order to save the parklands’, ‘America as a bastion of human freedom in a tenuously unfree world’, and ‘democracy as a vehicle for people to choose what they value most’. Both economics and politics have thus glossed the matter of human values.

This is also true in religion. How many times have we heard the value ‘devotion’? It is pretty much a standard expressed value throughout the world, serving as a sort of measuring stick for individual holiness. Yet, the same second-look at this supposed value leads to a curious reflection: devotion to what? If the response is ‘devotion to God’, or Allah or whatever, then this is merely empty jargon, for what in the heck do these, then represent? If the value of ‘devotion to God’ is the ‘measure of one’s holiness’, then we clearly have a circular ‘explanation’ so this can’t be the ultimate value of devotion. But if not this, then what?

What are the values in religion? Not religion as a generic, vague group of practices and such that humans do, but religion as a Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism? If indeed, a value of Christianity is preservation of human life, then the Crusades would never have been fought, and instead, moved forward respectfully to the Muslims with conscious discussion, rapport building, and collaboration. If Islam likewise is a religion that recognizes an essential value of human life, then how could they ever have fought against Crusaders?

As it is likely self-defeating for ecologists to ignore where economists are placing their values, it is self defeating for Americans to ignore the emptiness of ‘America’ or ‘democracy’ as values in and of themselves, and look more closely at what such supposed values are reaching for. For the ecologist to adequately champion the viability of the Earth, he or she must recognize the vacancy of values in the economists' equations in the first place. For Americans to champion democracy, the issue is not voting at all, but voting for what! To say that the mere ability to have an ‘equal right’ to express and reach for one’s choices, says nothing about the nature of the values upon which such choices are made. A mob can be resplendent with members who are equally choosing to stone a person with whom they disagree.

Religion is not a value in itself. Neither is Christianity or Islam, though already I am quite likely, already being infuriating by saying so. Neither is ‘devotion’, or ‘prayer’, or even ‘love’… as the questions – those muddying, confounding, disturbing questions – of value remain. To what value is one devoted, around what values does one pray, and what does one value so much that they love?