summer
Giving Voice to Our Values the thought experiment
Afundamental premise of many Eastern philosophies and martial arts is to move with one’s momentum and energy, rather than fight against them. The approach to voicing and acting on our values described in these pages a ttempts to build on that same principle. Rather than taking a preaching stance wherein we might try to coun- ter temptations with all the moral reasons why we should behave ethically, or taking a persuasive stance wherein we might counter those same temptations with all the prac- tical arguments for ethical behavior, the approach here is to take an enabling stance. We try to identify both the times when we already want to act in accordance with our highest moral values and also the reasons why we feel that way, and then we focus on building the confi- dence and skills and the scripts that enable us to do so effectively and with the least amount of angst. Rather than pushing or pulling ourselves into values-based ac- tion, we try to grease the skids that might carry us there.
One way that we try to work with personal momen- tum, rather than fight against it, is by framing our dis-
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Copyrighted Material
2 Giving Voice to Our Values cussion here as a thought experiment. We are invited to consider how we might voice and act on our values if we were going to do so. In this way, we sidestep all the pre- emptive arguments and rationalizations that pop up naturally, about how difficult or even impossible it may be to do so. We create a safe and enabling space, if you will, for experimentation and creative thinking.
In the service of creating that safe space, we try to be explicit about as many of the working assumptions that underlie this approach to enabling values-based ac- tion as possible. These assumptions are intended as the foundation for an exploratory rather than coercive stance. This explicit naming of our assumptions allows for a kind of informed consent at best, or at least for a provi-
Afundamental premise of many Eastern philosophies and martial arts is to move with one’s momentum and energy, rather than fight against them. The approach to voicing and acting on our values described in these pages a ttempts to build on that same principle. Rather than taking a preaching stance wherein we might try to coun- ter temptations with all the moral reasons why we should behave ethically, or taking a persuasive stance wherein we might counter those same temptations with all the prac- tical arguments for ethical behavior, the approach here is to take an enabling stance. We try to identify both the times when we already want to act in accordance with our highest moral values and also the reasons why we feel that way, and then we focus on building the confi- dence and skills and the scripts that enable us to do so effectively and with the least amount of angst. Rather than pushing or pulling ourselves into values-based ac- tion, we try to grease the skids that might carry us there.
One way that we try to work with personal momen- tum, rather than fight against it, is by framing our dis-
1
Copyrighted Material
2 Giving Voice to Our Values cussion here as a thought experiment. We are invited to consider how we might voice and act on our values if we were going to do so. In this way, we sidestep all the pre- emptive arguments and rationalizations that pop up naturally, about how difficult or even impossible it may be to do so. We create a safe and enabling space, if you will, for experimentation and creative thinking.
In the service of creating that safe space, we try to be explicit about as many of the working assumptions that underlie this approach to enabling values-based ac- tion as possible. These assumptions are intended as the foundation for an exploratory rather than coercive stance. This explicit naming of our assumptions allows for a kind of informed consent at best, or at least for a provi-