Why Is Any Of This Important ... Values|Part 1:

Top of the Week to You! I've begun here with a definite orientation ... community. And I've associated that idea to society and communication. I've also invoked the name of the good Dr. Graves and a few others ... now I believe it's time to add some layering to the cake I'm constructing. All good cakes begin with a foundation, what they are going to be built from, usually the cake part. Even though most folks love the icing if the cake part doesn't create a great foundation overall the cake will fail. In community I think the cake part get made up of a few simple ingredients:

COMMUNICATION

VALUES

INTENTIONALITY/DIRECTION

I intend to rant a bit about both COMMUNICATION and INTENTIONALITY/DIRECTION down the road a piece, but for now I'd like to begin with the VALUES piece. This relates directly to Dr. Graves and my previous comments. Once again for me the Graves Model is a road map of sorts, in particular a road map of the evolution of social values. These are values that are important to the individual AND YET they are also the predominant values held by a group or groups within a society ... or possibly even the entire society itself. Dr. Graves does a brilliant job of describing both the evolution and the values held at various points in the evolution through the system he defines, so I'll leave that to him. Suffice it say for our dialouge that I am referencing this system as a roadmap for individuals and groups within society/ies and not as typology of any particular individuals. WIth regard to these values I'm most immersed myself in a society where most of the individual operating within it align themselves in relation to what the good doctor refers to as Values Levels: Five, Six and Seven, with some Fours thrown in for good measure and leavening. Today let's take the FOUR position to begin: I've suggested that the values set of Fours are all about Law and Order ... RULES and can be said to most responsible for developing the large structures and systems of civilization and society as we know of it today. This would include our various forms of organized religion, political structures, legal systems ... and other aspects of orderly and governed society like mass education. Some of the most obvious elements of this value set include a desire for commonality, obeisance, clannishness and a supposed self-evident rightiousness. This value set begins from a beilef in a CORRECT WAY OF DOING THINGS, including a correct way of being as well as behaving, and of KNOWING WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO BE DOING IT ... and are willing to impose this way on others. This description probably sounds familiar to many of you reading this, and I'll guess NOT the value set you share as your default position ... mostly. A lot of the remnants of the Four value set that show up in the Six value set (NB - Six equals Green if you're more accustomed to the Spiral Dynamics model or Ken Wilber's descriptions). My guess again would be that many of the folks reading this are either living out of a primarly Six value set or progressing through it. So I always find it interesting when folks push back against the Four value set so hard ... think anti-organized religion, but spiritual nonetheless for an example. Anyway I promised to talk about why this is so important ... IMO one of the most interesting things about the Four value set begins with the recognition that most, if not all, of the folks reading this now have been raised within a highly structured Four values system ... organized mass education designed to prepare society to become and remain productive (in an industrialized world). In the beginning we were mostly taught to sit still, remain quiet, pay attention to authority (the teacher), curry favor with those in authority (again the teacher ... and you can add later on the principal ... the coach ... the boss ..., pick your poison as they say), learn what was being taught and regurgitate upon demand ... you probably get the idea. All of this was organized and designed within a highly developed Four value set to prepare the masses to lead lives of productivity and obedience ... if not obeisance. One of the great source of information on this topic is John Gatto, of the Odysseus Group ... "Challenging the Myths of Modern Education". I think you should bookmark the website, order John's tapes and study what he has to say ... I believe it will change your life if you are unaware of his message. Simply put, the educational system of the Western industrialized world was originally designed to create good soliders and later good industrial employees who would follow orders and be limited in their ability to think (especially outside the box putting together ideas in original or innovative ways). Two quotes from John Gatto's Fourth Purpose Films page on the website. the first what I think most follks want to belive about our education (and the educational system) and its purpose, and the second more closely aligned with the actual system we were raised in and are mostly allowing our children to be raised in as well (by many well meaning but largely ignorant folks):

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be…

- Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, Jan 6th, 1816

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

- Woodrow Wilson, from an address to The New York City High School Teachers Association Jan. 9th, 1909

So most, if not all of us, began with this basic training ... our earliest boot camp where we were put into a controlled and controlling context and drilled on the orderly manner in which we would later be expected to perform. This same education system was originally developed in Northern Europe, then exported to the fledgling United States of America who adopted it with fervent gusto - implementing it wholesale as a mandatory, forced public educational system, and then once more exported to both the Near and Far East where countries like India, Japan and China have embraced this same system with hopes of becoming competitive in the modern, industrialized world. Each time this system was employed national productivity soared, there was an economic eruption and the flush of great financial success. Again, once it has been pointed out, I'm guessing this scenario becomes highly recognizable and familiar. Many of the pundits of modern socieity suggest that we need more of this kind of contolling and highly structured education ... "just to remain competitive". I'd point out Thomas Friedman the New York Times columnist as one of these pundits IMO. I find this especially true of his most recent book, "The World Is Flat" and his suggestion that we must enhance our ability to train scientists and engineers to compete with graduates in India and elsewhere in Asia. This is a Six world-view thinking through a Four lens and filtering the information against a worn and used template. Obviously from my comments I think this to be wrong thinking. I think Friedman while brilliant in some ways, and others who like him are preaching this particular gospel, are significantly off base ... well intentioned ... and highly misguided and misdirected. We cannot move forward by holding onto the our past. In fact what we've begun to do ... and rightly so IMO ... has been to pass along our means of success to those who have lagged behind us in this regard. That has always been the way of human progress and societal evolution. The outstanding question remains:

"If not "THIS" ... what we are familiar with and comfortable with ... than what?"

My only clue here would be a reference to the next wave in the Graves Model value sets ... the Five position ... Where within the Four position a mistake of judgement in regard to what has been given and known to be true would be considered a grave misstep, within the Five position only the inability to act would be considered so grave an error. Fours punish mistakes harshly and they are seldom forgiven (think: Nathaniel Hawhthornes' "Scarlet Letter"). Fives on the other-hand forgive mistakes of action easily, create opportunities for immediate correction and punish those who fail to decide and/or act harshly (think: Donald Trump, "The Apprentice"). Until next time ... Best regards, Joseph Riggio, Social Ontologist Princeton, NJ PS - Thanks for hanging out to read this long post ... I promise I'll do my best to make the next parts in the series more concise (I just wanted to lay the proper foundation `'~>)