Working with Worthless Values
Someone (perhaps John Madden) said, "The best defense is a good offense." I've also heard, "Do unto others what you would have others do unto you — only do them first." It's a 'win-at-any-cost' world. If you can't win, fake it. Back in the era of the Cold War, the story was told about the horse race that included entries from both the Soviet Union and the United States. Pravda reported the results thus: "The superior Soviet thoroughbred finished a glorious second, while the American nag came in next-to-last." They simply neglected to mention that there were only two horses in the race. Talk about spin!
So, what does the title of today's article mean? Isn't a 'worthless value' an oxymoron? How can a 'value' have no worth? Isn't 'worth' a measure of value? Oh, yes, it certainly ought to be! However, in practice that's not always the way it turn out. Our culture uncritically accepts many disvalues as worthwhile: the 'win-at-any-cost' attitude presents just one example. The most egregious example I can think of is when people characterize punishment as 'self defense:. I can hear it now: "Yes, your honor, I was only defending myself and my family; that's why I strapped the man down helplessly on the table and pumped his veins full of poison!" As Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind."
OK — so I lied. You really can't 'work' with worthless values. Each one of them takes you down a road personally and professionally that you really don't want to travel. The value of 'honor' gets all too easily lost in a culture of short-term gain. Oscar Wilde said, "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." If so, our Western culture must be about the most cynical that the world has ever seen. And, to continue the string of quotes I'm spewing out this morning, as Dr. Phil is so fond of asking, "How's that working out for you?" What do you have to say for yourself?
Is is 'politics as usual' as we slog through the primary season, or it 'business as usual' as the predatory lenders get offered bailouts in the name of stabilizing the world economy? And our culture has plenty of company in the 'short term gain' department: let's not buy name-brand drugs from Canada or Mexico because they might not be up to our standards but let's encourage name-brand drugs to be produced in our own country with unregulated Chinese ingredients! Let's win at any cost!
All our communitarian life strategies directly confront this very corrosive series of opinions and behaviors. And, confrontation proves to be the only approach to 'worthless values' that really works. Empathy is the strategy that encourages us to join together in cooperation rather than pretending that everyone (especially our competitors) are enemies. Understanding is the strategy that reminds us that our competitive culture isn't the only (or the best) way of approaching one another on a human — as well as a business — level. And, finally, anticipation is the strategy that requires that, as a team, we build a workable plan to achieve our common goals. It's that simple — and that profound.
How do you work with worthless values? You don't. You discard them in favor of values that recognize our common (and individual) dignity and that build a worthwhile future for all of humanity.
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown
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