>After all, what are values and who defines them ? Like marriage,
>government, and relegion , values are what we created and what we have
>propogated through history. My point is that we are still at a nascent
>stage and we should inquire further before labelling certain behaviours as
>'good' and others as 'bad'. Perhaps a large chunk of history's massacres
>and bloodsheds have been caused by people who think they are acting in
>accordance with good values ( eg. the crusades).
>Nothing is inherently good or bad, it is only the way that we choose to
>see it that defines the goodness or badness of an action.
His/this statement "did it to me" and made me come out of the darkness of
Lurkingland once again.
Thanks to -sometimes very painfull- experiences in my life I discovered
that what he (or she???????) above stated is true, - at least for me!
Without these experiences I don't think I would be able to do my work as a
consultant. Instead of being mister 'Wiseguy" who comes into an office
with a trunk full of answers and solutions I now know that the answers to
questions and the solutions to problems can be found where they arised:
inside the owners of the problems. What clients ask for is a kind of
Birthhelp or midhelp. (Is this english?)
Every misunderstanding, discussion, debat, quarl, fight, (armed) conflict,
battle or war is the vissible consequence of a confrontation between
values. Once I heard someone say: Every vissible external conflict is a
sign of an insufficient and unfinished internal conflict . IMO you can
describe or define a value as "an inner source of power that can incite me
to consider my thoughts and my actions". If I am not aware of these
powersources, they will not incite me to act out of insight, but work
anyway in the unconsious levels of my personality. All my actions are then
based on pre-judices. When a value appears to be stronger then me, it's
ruling over me. The _value_ "decides" what is good, right or true and what
has to be done. In such cases I am a slave of my value or -in other words-
I am a prey to my pre-judices.
The moment I become aware of this e-value-ating power in me, and I
realize what it does to me and others, I'm able to choose -in freedom-
whether to follow it or not. From that moment on I am liberated from the
slavery of my set of values; or at least from the slavery of that
particular one. This is what makes us human beings IMO different from
animals: the possibillity to gain self-awareness, insight and
consioussness (in this following order) of our instincts plus the abillity
to choose and take initiative. At this point I'd like to introduce the
terms "individualized values" and "non-individualized values". As long as
I am not consiousness of the values that drive me to (re-)act in
situations I speak of non-individualized values.
Out of a timeperspective non-induvidualized values always work as
commandments out from the past into the here and now. Perhaps you can
still here your father, mother or teacher plugging it into you: Always be
nice to somebody! keep smiling! Don't stop until you've finished! Don't
make mistakes! Always be right! Always look good! Always have an answer!
etc, etc, etc,. They work as a standard you have learned you MUST reach or
obey. It forces you to act in accordance to this standard. If you haven't
reached that standard, it means that you've failed and feelings of quilt
or lonelyness are your reward.
One year ago I had a moving experience during a meeting with a client and
his marketing-staff. There was a conflict between one of his marketeers
(John) and the rest of his staff. I was invited to help them with this
conflict. They had reached a stage where they couldn't listen to eachother
anymore. Everything was misunderstood and misinterpreted. John was doing a
presentation on a new product he wanted to put on the market. During the
two years John worked at that organisation he hadn't been able to get
through one single proposal. So it became more and more important for him
to succeed. There was a very tensed atmosphere in the meetingroom and
everybody was getting at him with all kind of negative arguments on the
poor quality of both product and presentation. With a red face and
sweating he -as usual- dependently warded off all arguments, not open to
any of the contributions. On a certain point during that meeting John satt
down and everybody suddenly kept silence. John looked like a broken man.
This silence kept on for about 2 minutes. In this silence I asked John
what he felt. He said that he felt lonely. I asked the others if they
could understand John's feelings. They unanimously did and felt very sorry
for him. Some of them said that they felt ashamed for what had happened.
The tensed atmosphere vanished completely. Then I asked John what he
thought had caused this situation. It was clear to him that it was his
kind of behaviour that had caused it. To the question what had driven him
to do so his plain answer was: "Looking good and being right". I asked the
same questions to the others and each of them came up with his "driver"
that had made him act the way he did. In the following converstion we
talked freely about values and believesystems and how values can sabotage
open dialogs and collaboration if one isn't aware of them. Everybody
-including myself - told about his biggest misstep and what
"non-individualized value" had caused it. At the end I asked John what
value instead of "looking good and being right"he would like to try to
live up to. He answered: "Going public".
To me this is an important example on how a demanding and commanding "
non-individualized value" can be transformed into an emancipatoric
individualized value.
greetings from sunshine Holland!
Winfried M. Deijmann bc. Dipl.Eur.
Deijmann & Partners
tel.: +31 (0)575-522076
Human Relations and Communications Consultancy fax.: +31
(0)575-527310
Het Zwanevlot 37
NL 7206 CB Zutphen
Netherlands Email: winfried@universal.nl
Homepage:
http://www.universal.nl/users/winfried/default.htm
"An educated mind is useless without a focussed will and dangerous without
a loving heart" (unknown source)
--winfried@universal.nl (W.M. Deijmann)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>