Values for the 21st century

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

President Maithripala Sirisena was elected on a platform that
emphasised values. A man to restore disappearing human
values was the theme of the campaign video. It is not an
easy undertaking and the President has been acting on his
promises for mixed results.
Earlier this year, the President delivered an emotional appeal
to those who try to derail his efforts to bring about
reconciliation after years of a brutal war. He talked about his
visit with displaced families in the north. He had asked them
how they are managing, what they eat, how they eat and
whether their children are learning. He challenged his
detractors to visit the north and to see for themselves the
human issues involved. It was a powerful speech worth of a
values President.

It was also a politically sensitive speech in face of the reality of 48 million or

so who may have voted against him for a continuation of the us-them
mentality of the past regime. This context is perhaps the backdrop for the
unwarranted reaction by the President to condemn a demonstration of
sexuality at a rock music event attended by the Colombo elite. Is it political
astuteness or a disturbing trend towards cultural policing? I hope it is the
former.
One good thing about the brouhaha surrounding the rock concert event is
that it provides us a great starting point for a discussion on values. Who
defines our values and what is the role of our political leaders in such
definitions?
Limits of leadership
As much as we like to think that
religions teach us values, and just
leaders or institutions such as schools
will guide us as we stray from those
values, the reality is more akin to a slow
evolution of values created and
recreated by society itself.
As Matt Ridley argues in his 2015 book
titled Evolution of Everything including
the evolution of morality and culture,
Adams Smith saw an invisible hand in
the evolution of morality long before he
wrote about the invisible hand in his
treatise on economics. Ridley says that
morality in Smiths view, is a
spontaneous phenomenon in the sense
that people decide their own moral
codes by seeking mutual sympathy of
sentiments in society.
Moral judgements are generalisations
arrived at inductively on the basis of
past experiences. We log our own
approvals and disapprovals of our own
and others conducts, and observe
others doing the same. Frequently

repeated patterns of judgement can come to have the appearance of moral

duties or even commandments from on high, while patterns that recur with
less frequency will enjoy commensurately less confidence. It is in the messy
empirical world of human experience that we find morality. Moral
philosophers observe what we do; they do not invent it.
Ridley quotes Stephen Pinkers writing on reduction of violence in society
and other literature to argue that even when governments succeed in
policies for reducing violence, for example, those efforts are really attempts
to reflect changing sensibility more than to change sensibility.
Moral sense and the propensity to violence and sordid behaviour evolve.
They evolve not because somebody ordains that they evolve, but
spontaneously. The moral order emerges and continually changes. Of
course it can evolve towards greater violence, and has done so from time to
time, but, mostly it has evolved towards peace.
The driving force for this evolution of society towards civility is explained by
Ridley using Adamss example of how a child discovers morality.
A child does not have a sense of morality and has to find out the hard way
that he or she is not the centre of the world. Gradually by trial and error, a
child discovers what behaviour leads to mutual sympathy or sentiments,
and therefore can make him of her happy by making others happy. It is
through everybody accommodating their desires to those of others that a
system of shared morality arises, according to Smith.
These are arguments that political leaders should heed. Leaders can be
examples of values they eschew, but, there are limits to their influence
because social morals are a result of larger forces yielding moral values
that transcend borders.
What are they these universal values and what is the role of lead actors and
institutions in society in accentuating or depressing these seemingly
universal values.
Universal human values
Values are social structures that are created and recreated by society itself.
What exactly are those values is a research question pursued by many.
At a societal level, preambles to constitutions are best places to look for
virtues that are valued by each society. The Preamble to the Indian

constitution provides a concise set of four values enshrined in that

constitution i.e. liberty, justice, equality and fraternity.
The Preamble to the Constitution of USA embodies same values in
somewhat different terminology when it cites justice, liberty, welfare,
tranquillity, defence and perfect union as its objectives.
At an individual level, religion or political ideologies are explicit about
virtues they seek to cultivate.
Twentieth century is marked by political ideologies that sought to create a
new social being free of feudal or capitalist shackles, as in the former Soviet
Union or Communist China, but, by all accounts these attempts have
created more suffering for millions if not billions of people.
Religions are by definition institutions that seek to cultivate positive virtues
in individuals.
In fact, billions of individuals world-wide turn to religion to find guidance in
life and to seek relief from suffering. Agnostics may say that religions too
have caused more suffering than relief, but, this is no place to delve into
those arguments.
More relevant to our discussion are the contributions from the discipline of
psychology because psychologists are professionally driven to identify
virtues that cross religious or ideological boundaries to find ways to
reducing mental pain and suffering for their patients.
Petersen and Seligmans work on Character Strengths and Virtues
published in 2004 is particularly useful in this regard because of their
empirical approach to identifying and categorising virtues.
They have sifted through values enshrined in religions, rituals, literature
and all types of human activities to cull 24 virtues that are valued by
society over time across national boundaries.
They have further aggregated these 24 attributes into six key categories
called wisdom and knowledge, courage, temperance, transcendence,
humanity and justice.
As true of any scientific finding, the conclusions of Petersen and Selgiman
are only as good as the next experiment that would refutes these findings.
In fact some others argue that the six categories do not quite withstand

additional empirical tests for robustness, but, for purpose at hand, the
Petersen and Seligman classification suffices, I believe.
In fact, I prefer Petersen and Selgimans classification because their 24
attributes and six categories can be further folded into the simpler three
attributes of (1) Openness to new ideas (2) Ability to actualise the ideas and
(3) Civility that tempers the actions.
These three categories are particularly easier to understand in a Sri Lankan
context because of their correspondence to the education for Head, Hand
and Heart concept that was popular in Kannangara education reforms of
1940s and respected even today.
Openness to new ideas
These are attributes that concern the Head. Petersen and Selgimans
Wisdom and Knowledge virtue category with its attributes of creativity,
curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning and perspective and wisdom
belong here. We bunch them all under the virtue of being open to new
ideas.
Ability to actualise the ideas
These are attributes that concern the Hand or the skills that helps one to
move forward with new ideas, be they large or small. We put Petersen and
Selgimans virtue categories of courage (including self-control bravery
persistence/grit integrity vitality/zest), temperance (forgiveness and mercy,
humility and modesty, prudence) and transcendence (including
appreciation of beauty or excellence, gratitude hope/optimism, humour and
playfulness and spirituality) as a set of virtues that gives the ability to
actualise new ideas.
As a society, at this point of time, perhaps as a reaction to fears of
globalisation, Sri Lankan may lean towards narrowly defined virtues of
temperance or transcendence over virtues of courage. For example we as a
society may be leaning towards ethnicity or geography based concepts to
seek meaning in our lives and emphasise virtues of temperance over
virtues of courage such as risk-taking and perseverance.
These are not the virtues for a society aspiring to improve its lot in the new
century.

However, there is reason for hope. As social scientists have repeatedly

shown us, the overall trajectory of human evolution has been towards a
morality that captures a balance of the virtues of courage, temperance and
transcendence.
A civility that tempers ones actions
This is the Heart component of the human values. Civility here would
include Petersen and Seligmans virtues categories of humanity (love,
kindness and social intelligence) and justice (active citizenship, fairness and
leadership).
New ideas or actions that carry out new ideas will not be seen as moral by
society if these actions are not balanced by concerns of humanity and
justice.
This New Year
In this new year, as the President uses the bully pulpit of his presidency to
exhort moral values, and the Parliament and civil society deliberate on a
new constitution, it would serve them well remember that morality is
defined by society and the evolutionary trend has been towards virtues that
(1) opens ones mind to new ideas, (2) gives the ability to actualise new
ideas (3) with civility that tempers ones actions.
The best that political leadership or education institutions can do is to serve
as exemplars and at best use light interventions that nudge society, or
enable conditions that allow good practices to evolve and emerge. I hope
to explore these interventions in anther column at another time.
Posted by Thavam