Topology of Valuing: dynamics of collective engagement with polyhedral value configurations

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The 20th century saw a multitude of studies and commentaries on values. It is ranked as one of the bloodiest centuries of all times. Nations continue to engage in extreme violence in the defence of values -- and are prepared to make use of pre-emptive nuclear strikes to that end. Nevertheless, appreciative inquiry into values and discussion of their nature remains a very "safe" and respectable topic. Appealing to values is a standard process in which all authorities engage -- frequently as a means of disguising agendas in conflict with those values and avoding exploration of differences in values labelled by the same words.

The challenge explored here is whether it is possible to break out of the trap of what might be framed as the "values game". This may be especially important in response to the seemingly unmanageable crises of the global knowledge society of the anthropocene era. Given the elusive nature of values, the question addressed here is whether individuals and groups can engage with and embody values more effectively as a means of engaging with these crises -- which strategically are essentially crises of values. This applies especially to those strategic crises relating to the environment.

The initial context for the following exploration was the instigation by the author in 1972 of the Human Values Project that formed part of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (online since 2000). This work, briefly summarized below, highlighted a range of issues -- notably the strategic implications for any transition from a knowledge society to a wisdom society (see Documents relating to Human Values and Wisdom).

Of particular importance now appears to be the recognition of the limitations of the typical descriptive focus on values and their significance -- avoiding consideration of both the challenge of tokenism and the manner in which people might better comprehend and engage with configurations of values in enabling more appropriate navigation of emergent psycho-social complexity. A distinction ios not made here between "ethics", "morals" and "values", the argument focuses more generally on the latter as including the former.

Following clarification of these issues, the question explored is how people and groups can comprehend and engage with configurations of values. The issue of "topology" is highlighted to contrast this approach with the universal tendency to present sets of values as a checklist, organized simplistically and asystemically. There is little consideration for the mnemonic factors that reinforce and sustain engagement with them -- and appropriate use of them as a strategic vehicle appropriate to a global knowledge society challenged by the "political will to change".

The argument is further developed separately (In Quest of Engaging Values: context of the Human Values and Wisdom Project, 2008; Coherent Value Frameworks: pillar-ization, polarization and polyhedral frames of reference, 2008; Psychodynamics of Collective Engagement with Polyhedral Value Configurations, 2008). The argument is summarized in a final paper (Embodying Values Dynamically through Alternation: integrating sets of polarized static values through indicative metaphor, 2008). The argument has also been presented in poster form In Quest of a Strategic Pattern Language: a new architecture of values [also available in PDF].

It is readily assumed that it is obvious what values are and that it is therefore a simple matter to understand them. In engaging in further discussion of values, and despite responsibility over decades for a "values" project (discussed below), a preliminary confession is in order. It is quite unclear to the writer what "values" "are" in "reality".

Despite the extensive literature on what values are, this recognition seems to be in accord with that of others. For example:

• Behind the misty wall of words, the diverse, even contradictory, interpretations, motivations and utilisations are an indication of fundamental divisions concerning values. In particular, the most basic human rights are more frequently invoked as a weapon of attack or defence against some party, rather than recognized as the royal road to a positive relationship between individuals and groups in an objective form of fraternity. René Maheu, Director-General, UNESCO
• In contrast with what is commonly assumed, a description, when carefully inspected, reveals the properties of the observer. We, observers, distinguish ourselves precisely by distinguishing what we apparently are not, the world. Francisco Varela

It was in this spirit that it appeared appropriate to explore values as "strange attractors" in psycho-social systems, in the light of the subtler understanding of the complexity sciences (Human Values as Strange Attractors: coevolution of classes of governance principles, 1993). As such they could be understood as phenomena beyond the typical definitional game-playing with which exploration of values is associated. Values are not conventional conceptual objects. Any asumption that they can be so treated disconnects whatever they are from the manner in which they function in psycho-social systems -- and above from the process whereby people engage with them.

A preface by Chris Mowles (Values in international development organisations: negotiating non-negotiables, Development in Practice, 18, 1 2008, pp. 5 - 16) to an extensive discussion can be fruitfully quoted at some length because of its frankness regarding these matters in practice:

As a consultant to international NGOs (INGOs), I am often asked by staff and managers to work with values. A number of patterns repeat themselves in the interchanges between us, and there are unspoken assumptions about the role of values in organisational life that I am expected to share. The principal of these is that an organisation can 'have' values, and that they should be fully shared by the employees: the way to undertake strategy, then, is to have a strong vision for the organisation, which is a way of realising the organisation's mission and values; and to find ways of airing this vision so that employees can commit themselves to it. Often I am enjoined to help staff and managers to 'close the gap' in practice between what they aspire to do and what they actually find themselves doing....

Over the past ten years I have been struck by how often values, which are supposed to be a source of organisational solidarity and motivation, end up being cited by managers and staff alike as one of the principal causes of their discontent with each other, or indeed for partner organisations' discontent with INGOs.... How is it, then, that the staff of organisations whose values are oriented so explicitly to doing good in the world can end up feeling undervalued, or that organisational value-statements can become a source of frustration and demoralisation? How do staff and managers who work in organisations with an overtly moral mission tend to explain and exercise that morality with regard to each other?

Values are... also frequently a source of demoralisation and destructive conflict. This is because the prevailing perceptions of values as instruments of management or as elements in some inchoate mystical whole render the power relationship between staff and managers undiscussable. Values need not be thought of as an instrument of management, and they are above all idealisations. An alternative theory of values is that they are emergent and intensely social phenomena that arise daily between people engaged in a collective enterprise.

If a world leader, such as Margaret Thatcher (Interview, Women's Own magazine, 31 October 1987) can famously assert ... there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families., what then can be said of "values" -- or of the "organization" or "culture" claiming them? As noted by Martin L.W. Hall (Systems Thinking and Human Values: towards understanding the chaos in organizations, 1999) in a commentary: There is really no such thing as an organizational value. It is really the manifestation of personal values in a larger context. To what extent do they then "exist"? Who has ever seen a value? Which declared "universal" values have not been meaningfully experienced by those expected to subscribe to them?

On the other hand Francisco Parra-Luna (Axiological Systems Theory:

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