Good Values, Bad Values, No Values?

This is really worth a read

If, for example, your country has a public health system that ensures that everyone who needs treatment receives it, without payment, it helps instil the belief that it is normal to care for strangers, and abnormal and wrong to neglect them. If you live in a country where people are left to die, this embeds the idea that you have no responsibility towards the poor and weak. The existence of these traits is supported by a vast body of experimental and observational research, of which Labour and the US Democrats appear determined to know nothing.

We are not born with our core values: they are strongly shaped by our social environment. These values can be placed on a spectrum between extrinsic and intrinsic. People towards the intrinsic end have high levels of self-acceptance, strong bonds of intimacy and a powerful desire to help others. People at the other end are drawn to external signifiers, such as fame, financial success and attractiveness. They seek praise and rewards from others.

Research across 70 countries suggests that intrinsic values are strongly associated with an understanding of others, tolerance, appreciation, cooperation and empathy. Those with strong extrinsic values tend to have lower empathy, a stronger attraction towards power, hierarchy and inequality, greater prejudice towards outsiders, and less concern for global justice and the natural world. These clusters exist in opposition to each other: as one set of values strengthens, the other weakens.

They tend to report higher levels of stress, anxiety, anger, envy, dissatisfaction and depression than those at the intrinsic end. Societies in which extrinsic goals are widely adopted are more unequal and uncooperative than those with deep intrinsic values. In one experiment, people with strong extrinsic values who were given a resource to share soon exhausted it (unlike a group with strong intrinsic values), as they all sought to take more than their due.

As extrinsic values are strongly associated with conservative politics, it's in the interests of conservative parties and conservative media to cultivate these values. There are three basic methods. The first is to generate a sense of threat. Experiments reported in the journal Motivation and Emotion suggest that when people feel threatened or insecure, they gravitate towards extrinsic goals. Perceived dangers – such as the threat of crime, terrorism, deficits, inflation or immigration – trigger a short-term survival response, in which you protect your own interests and forget other people's.

do read the whole thing, a really key contribution to the values debate. He makes the excellent point that if taxation if repeatedly portrayed as a burden, people will come to resent it and see it as a bad thing - taxation is one way in which we act as our brother and sisters keeper, one way in which we are bound together as a community and nation.

update: for a different but helpful perspective, try British Values do not Exist, which argues that we should be talking about British institutions (sovereign parliament, rule of law, monarchy etc.). Actually, not that different - the piece above is to some degree about how our institutions work (public health, the rule of law etc.) and how they shape, and are shaped by society. Values don't exist in a vacuum.

(and also see yesterdays post on what sort of values bring the best out of us)

Its enough to make you Scream

The £74m spent on Edvard Munch's the Scream could have helped 1.3m people in the East African famine. But it didn't, it was spent on a painting, and everybody clapped. I've yet to see anything in the news coverage or comment that's questioned  a value system which thinks this is ok. I don't think God is clapping.

Eventually, moth and rust will destroy this picture, and one can only hope this becomes a moment we look back on with shame.

Bonuses and the Bone Idle: Browns Moral Compass is pointing at you.

Despite the Sun setting over Gordon Brown's speech of a couple of days ago, I wanted to see how his moral compass was doing. Last years speech centred around 'fairness', this year riffed on a wider range of moral themes, most notably 'the many not the few' and a strong doctrine of merit: if you work hard, you should benefit, if you break the rules you should pay.

I've filletted the speech for all the values and beliefs statements in it. There's still a heck of a lot of it left after the surgery. Repeated phrases are left in intentionally, they give a flavour of the themes Brown kept coming back to.

The conclusion: Browns moral compass is alive and well, at least in his rhetoric anyway. The Presbyterian conscience may not be so overt (though he did throw in a reference to the Good Samaritan) but this was a speech based on a strong articulation of core values. The spine of the speech was an moral vision, the vertebrae were fairness, merit, hard work, hope, and the need for a ethical framework for everything from markets to politics to family and community life. Whether you think Labour puts these into practice is another matter....

(hopefully it's obvious, but the '...' means the next paragraph comes from a different section of the speech. There are a couple of sustained passages of 'values talk', but the rest is liberally scattered throughout. )

Gordon Browns Speech (Moral Compass Remix)

The change that benefits the hard working majority, not the privileged few....

...change that benefits the hard working majority and not just a privileged few...

...change that benefits the mainstream majority and not just a few....

...The opposition might think the test of a party is the quality of its marketing but I say the test for a government is the quality of its judgement...

..That's the change we choose, the change that benefits the many, not the few...

..Because what let the world down last autumn was not just bankrupt institutions but a bankrupt ideology. What failed was the Conservative idea that markets always self-correct but never self-destruct. What failed was the right wing fundamentalism that says you just leave everything to the market and says that free markets should not just be free but values free.

Bankers had lost sight of basic British values, acting responsibly and acting fairly. The values that we, the hard working majority, live by every day....

...It's the millions of people who do their best and do their bit and in return simply want their families to get on not just get by....


..It's the Britain that works best not by reckless risk-taking but by effort, by merit and by hard work. It's the Britain that works not just by self-interest but by self-discipline, self-improvement and self-reliance.

It's the Britain where we don't just care for ourselves, we also care for each other. And these are the values of fairness and responsibility that we teach our children, celebrate in our families, observe in our faiths, and honour in our communities.

Call them middle class values, call them traditional working class values, call them family values, all them all of these; these are the values of the mainstream majority; the anchor of Britain's families, the best instincts of the British people, the soul of our party and the mission of our government.

And I say this too; these are my values – the values I grew up with in an ordinary family in an ordinary town.

Like most families on middle and modest incomes we believed in making the most of our talents.
But we knew that no matter how hard we worked free education was our only pathway to being the best we could be. Because like most parents, my parents could not easily afford to put me and my brothers through fee paying schools....


...too much government can make people powerless. But too much government indifference can leave people powerless too.

Government should never try to do what it cannot do but it should never fail to do what it needs to do. And in a crisis what the British people want to know is that their government will not pass by on the other side but will be on their side...

...Markets need what they cannot generate themselves; they need what the British people alone can bring to them, I say to you today; markets need morals...

...Our new economic model for a strong economy is founded on three guiding principles.
- That in future finance must always be the servant of people and industry and not their master.
- That our future economy must be a green economy.
- And that we must realise all of Britain's talent if we are to lead and succeed....

...it cannot be right, for a girl of sixteen, to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own....

...if you ask your neighbours or your workmates how they feel right now in this fast changing world, they will probably talk about their sense of unease.The decent hard working majority feel the odds are stacked in favour of a minority, who will talk about their rights, but never accept their responsibilities....

...In a faster changing more mobile world of communities where family breakdown is more common, where children are at risk on the internet, where elderly people are too often isolated in their communities, the new society must be explicit about the boundaries between right and wrong- and about the new responsibilities we demand of people in return for the rights they have. And I stand with the people who are sick and tired of others playing by different rules or no rules at all...

... We will pass legislation that the British government is obliged to raise spending on aid to the poorest countries to 0.7% of our national income. Others may break their promises to the poorest, with Labour Britain never will...

...change that benefits not just the few who can pay but the mainstream majority....

...we need social care for our elderly which is not subject to a post code lottery, but available to all – to the hard working majority, and not just the few who can pay.

This is the change we choose; change that will benefit not just the few who can afford to pay, but the mainstream majority...

..But a fair and responsible Britain must be an accountable Britain – a nation not of powerful institutions but powerful people.

And just as I have said that the market needs morals I also say that politics needs morals too.

Never again should it be said of any Member of Parliament that they are in it for what they can get; all of us should be in Parliament for what we can give....

..I grew up in a family, a party and a country that believes no obstacle is so great that it can stop the onwards march of fairness and of justice.

......We can build a new economy which tames the old excesses.

...We love this country. And we have shown over the years that if you aim high you can lift not just yourself but your country — that there is nothing in life which is inevitable – it's about the change you choose.
And I say to you now –
- Never stop believing in the good sense of the British people.
- Never stop believing we can move forward to a fairer, more responsible, more prosperous Britain.
- Never stop believing we can make a Britain equal to its best ideals.
- Never, never stop believing. And because the task is difficult the triumph will be even greater.
- Now is not the time to give in but to reach inside ourselves for the strength of our convictions.

Because we are the Labour Party and our abiding duty is to stand. And fight. And win. And serve.

Final thought: there's very little in any of this that people couldn't agree with. The trouble is that with leaders, you have to buy into the person as well as the message.

Downward Mobility

reminded of this powerful insight from Henri Nouwen

“…The society in which we live suggests in countless ways that the way to go is up. Making it to the top, entering the limelight, breaking the record - that's what draws attention, gets us on the front page of the newspaper, and offers us the rewards of money and fame.

The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not of upward mobility but of downward mobility. It is going to the bottom, staying behind the sets, and choosing the last place! Why is the way of Jesus worth choosing? Because it is the way to the Kingdom, the way Jesus took, and the way that brings everlasting life.”

Ht Prodigal Kiwi(s)

Teenagers 'contribute £300m to economy' through voluntary work

A new report out from the Evangelical Alliance, reported here on the Beeb, is a useful corrective to the stereotypes many folk have of teenagers. It reports that nearly half do voluntary work at least once a month, and the vast majority give regularly to charity.

The report has an intro from Prince Charles, and is based on (yet another!!) survey, this time of 700 14-18's, also notes that faith is a significant motivating factor in people offering time as volunteers. Though 40% of young people volunteer regularly, this figure rises sharply with those who are more committed in their faith. The report notes that it could be because being part of a church offers young people more opportunities to volunteer, as well as being motivated to do so by their faith in the first place.

The top three reasons for volunteering were 'contribute to society', 'like helping people' and 'looks good on CV' (!)

The report also finds that among teenagers 50% buy fair trade where available, and 85% try to reduce their carbon footprint.

It would be great to hear this story about our young people more often, alongside the ones we more regularly hear about crime, violence, sex and consumerism.

Full report here
EA statement and links here.