The Politics of Values

Since the advent of Reaganism we have been subjected to the politics of values. But what are values and how do they play out in politics?

Let us consider values as distinct from facts. Facts require evidence, values do not. Facts have a greater or lesser amount of evidence to support them. The more evidence the greater the facticity. Values are human creations, they are not found in nature. They have a substantial degree of emotional content. Being a human creation, having no necessary connection to the natural world, and being emotionally charged makes them an ideal vehicle for controlling society.

This being the case values should always be examined, especially when being employed to persuade people. Questions that need to be honestly explored are: Who is pushing the particular values? Do they have any non-value interest in the effort being made? If so what are those interests and who else will benefit by society's pursuit of them?

Another downside of values is, that being detached from the real world, they can be treated as absolutes because there can be no fact contradicting them. This makes values immune to any imperative derived from the natural world, e.g. global warming or overpopulation. This detachment from reality also means that belief in values can lead to a kind of insanity. Human beings can invest any amount of passion, good or bad, they choose in support of them. This is compounded by their apparently absolute nature, another "benefit" of being detached form the real, testable, world of fact. As a result, there is nothing to cast doubt on a value and the human passion for certainty finds a safe home. Thus people are free to believe any fantasy by calling it a value, which, being absolute, cannot be challenged. As a result "belief" is elevated to the highest levels of certainty and is so psychologically powerful that many people cannot distinguish between belief and fact.

Some examples may clarify the relevance of this argument against the innocence of values. We have, for example, placed a high value on human life. Left unexamined, this value has been and is being used to thwart human birth reduction. Millions of people, e.g. Christian, Muslim, believe preventing the birth of human beings and aborting the human fetus is morally wrong. Yet the evidence is that this planet cannot handle unlimited human births. This obviously insane behavior is not only tolerated, but encouraged because values that once had relevance when humans were few and weak, have gone unexamined, and are even frequently reinvigorated despite the obvious consequences. Obviously we are at a stage where the quality of human life, not, the quantity, is of primary importance. It is also obvious that the facts have trumped values in importance.

Finally, as alluded to above, values are used by the powerful to control those less powerful. An interesting study would be to delineate the primary values of a society and then analyze the use made of those values by the controlling elite to control the rest of the society. In my last column I attempted to do that with the American value of freedom. As I tried to show, this value, left unexamined, has permitted corporations to defend their constant immersive propaganda as their right to exercise free speech. They, of course, have a huge megaphone, that will easily drown out the free speech of others. Because of the high value we place on free speech, we, including the Supreme Court, have allowed the free speech of some to kill the free speech of others. Obviously the facts surrounding this issue would call for a greater opportunity to be heard for those with a weaker voice, but the value of free speech cloaked in its robe of absoluteness, is not allowed to be challenged by the facts,

Socrates declared that the unexamined life was not worth living. One might add that the unexamined value can be a source of great harm to the living.

Bob Newhard