1. Seven Universal and Timeless Values

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Characteristics of The Seven Values

The illustration above shows the seven values that are embedded in our DNA. It also shows their relationship to each other. They are integral to our being, and give us the capability to make decisions to become complete as a person and offer us the means to have a positive and constructive social life. They exist in every person of every race, culture, ethnicity, nation, and gender. The combination of the seven values and their characteristics provide the foundation for the development of a logically integrated proactive morality and ethic.

Self-Evident

The self-evident nature of these values is only one of several characteristics that have obscured their presence while in plain sight. The four primary values are self-evident similarly as those stated in the famous sentence in the United States Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths (values) to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The proof of this becomes evident when people around the world are asked whether they would like to enjoy an improving quality of life, as they define it.

Universal

These values are also universal to all people of all races, cultures, ethnicity, nations, and genders. Ask anyone, whether they live in Bangladesh or Baltimore, Houston or Hanoi if they would like to develop the innate potential they brought into life and to improve their quality of life with an equal ability as anyone else would or could. The answers are universally the same.

Innate / Timeless

Even though I cannot prove it, evidence seems to suggest that these seven values are innate to our species and have been embedded in our DNA from our earliest beginnings. They have motivated us, everyone, to yearn for the improvement of our quality of life materially and socially.

These seven values are the original cause of human motivation,2 (page 15), that urge us to improve our quality of life materially and socially. We can safely predict that these same values will continue to motivate our species to search for an ever-improving quality of life, and to grow into our innate individual and collective potential in future centuries and millennia.

Irreducible / Immutable

Life and the three primary values are the superordinate values of our species and are not subordinate to any other values. The pursuit of equality, growth, and an improving quality of life provide the foundation for human motivation as interpreted by the individual, and express themselves in a personal hierarchy of needs.

The Four Primary Values

The four primary values are remarkable because they constitute an innate “code of decision-making” that will produce consistent results regardless of the culture in which they are used. These values urge us, motivate us, to improve the quality of our lives.

Life is the ultimate value.

Life , the three primary values, and the three secondary values create an integral system of values.

Decisions made about Life are qualified by the other six values as the criteria for human decision-making.

Equality

Equality is inherent in the value of life — everyone’s life is valuable. We give equal value to each individual, and we would seek to provide more equitable opportunity to every individual to develop their innate potential, as we would our own. This is the value that empowers us to work together to improve our world.

A Caveat for the primary value “Equality.” The moral and ethical person is not naïve to assume that everyone else is moral and ethical. But until proven otherwise be authentic, genuine, ethical, and do practice and use the Expressed Ethics, page 35. It is unfortunate that we live in a hostile social environment where we seem to be constantly confronted with those who have chosen to be NON-human. Non-humanness can vary from short-changing us at the cash register to the extreme of kidnapping, rape, and death of a victim. Do not tempt those who are NON-human to express their inhumanity to you!

Growth

Growth is essential for improving our quality of life. To be human is to strive to grow into our innate potential. Only a proactive morality and ethic has the capability to support the growth of others.

This value ensures that the inherent potential of individuals, societies, and a civilization becomes expressed and fulfilled, which encourages an improving quality of life for everyone. Without growth, there would be no possibility of social evolution and social sustainability.

Quality of Life

While life is fundamental to survival and continued existence, it is the quality of life that makes life worth living and gives life meaning. In a democracy, access to the quality of life is provided when a person not only has an equal right to life, but that person also has an equal right to growth as anyone else. This is what makes immigrants so excited to move to a democracy — they seek freedom to experience the quality of life that makes life worth living — to control their own destiny and to explore their innate potential with the opportunities that a democratic nation provides.

The Three Secondary Value-Emotions

Equality  → Empathy, Compassion, and “Love”

The primary value Equality is the source for the three secondary value-emotions values, (see illustration, page 11). We know when equality is out of balance because of the secondary value-emotion of empathy – to “feel” or put our self in the place of another person and sense what that is like, whether that is in anguish or in joy. When we feel empathy for others, we want to act in compassion, to reach out to the other person and assist them in their situation. When empathy and compassion are combined and we feel that equally for everyone, then we say that we have a “Love” for all humanity — the capacity to care for another person or all of humanity, as we would for our self.

Empathy, compassion, and “Love” support the development of a higher quality of life for our self and with others by providing the motivating energy to grow into a more complete, mature, and functional individual within our self and within our social environment. They allow us to see the common good as societal rather than selfishly personal. Their expression demonstrates the highest ennobling qualities of human nature at its best. With these three value-emotions, we have the direction and motivation from which to develop highly positive family dynamics; and a loving, compassionate, and empathic means of validating holistic growth in individuals, families and societies.

When we consciously internalize the primary values and secondary value-emotions, we realize that the collective power of individuals affects individuals everywhere as much as the individual affects the collective whole.

Human Motivation

The pursuit of equality, growth, and an improving quality of life provide the foundation for human motivation as interpreted by the individual, and express themselves in a personal hierarchy of needs. These values motivate all people — as they interpret them! Our interpretations of those seven values give rise to a hierarchy of needs (Abraham Maslow). Human motivation is at the core of all human activity, for good or bad. By understanding the fundamentals of human motivation social scientists and economists, for example, will have a huge advantage for more accurately predicting human behavior.

Because humans have been unaware of the innate values within themselves that have motivated them in their lives, a uniform and unified theory of human motivation has never come into existence, until now. Together, the innate seven values of our species provide us with a unified, values-based theory of human motivation. Eponymously, it becomes the Raphael Unified Theory of Human Motivation.3 Fortunately, too, integrating the four primary values with the three secondary values provides the original cause for a proactive morality and ethic.

The synergism of the primary and secondary value systems gives us a complete picture of human motivation and an accurate reflection of us as individuals — thinking and compassionate. The three primary values and the three secondary value-emotions complete the circle of our existence by engaging the analytical-side of individual and social existence with the intuitive and heart-connected side of our existence.

Further, these values give us the capability of improving the quality of our own life through our intra-personal relationship with our self; and inter-personal relationship with others. The unification of these two value systems motivates us to explore our innate potential and find meaning in our life, to confidently unlock our potential, and aid others to unlock their own. The three secondary value-emotions connect us to others through our empathy to act in compassion to come to the aid of others. In doing so, these values reflect that we are being fully human. Peace will never become possible until we become fully human in our intra- and inter-personal relationships.

Priorities of Decision-Making

The Illustration below is an Organic Decision-Making Tree based on using the seven values for decision-making that supports social sustainability. It provides individuals and organizations with a logical and rational process for reframing human motivation collectively from the simple task of sustaining the species to sustaining the social fabric of our communities and societies. The illustration makes it clear that there is a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship involved between the individual/family and organizations to jointly support the sustainability of communities and societies in which they both exist.

The survival of communities and societies is dependent upon all individuals/families and organizations faithfully using the seven values as the criteria for their decisions. Adhering to the priorities of the organic decision-making tree will result in socially sustainable families and organizations and the development of stable and peaceful communities and societies.

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The First Priority is always to sustain the species because it holds the genetic program of our species. The primal motivation of the individual is to reproduce to sustain the continuation of the species. At the early animal survival level of our species that does not require a family, community, society, organizations, or morality and ethics.

That same priority exists in developed societies as our own. For organizations to sustain the species, that means not polluting or endangering the species in any way that would cause damage to the genetic program. For families that means teaching children how to live in a functional loving family, and how to live peacefully in the community and the larger society.

It may seen as though I am stating the obvious, but the other side of that statement is raising children without any direction for establishing their own functional family, and raising children who do not know how to live peacefully in their community and society. When that occurs, that is the initiation of the disintegration of families, communities, and societies.

The second priority is to sustain the social fabric (functional families) that holds communities and societies together. Because individuals and organizations are the only decision-makers in the decision-making tree, their individual and joint responsibility is to support the social sustainability of their communities and societies. The reason organizations are directly responsible arises because families are the primary socializing and enculturating social institution that can produce well qualified, socially capable, responsible, and competent employees. The source of all future generations of directors, managers, executives, middle managers, supervisors, team leaders, consultants, and the great body of employees come from families. If the quality of the child’s preparation for entering into the work force, whether as a laborer or as a member of some board of directors, is high then those organizations will benefit from the good work that the parents have done raising that child.

This second priority supports the synergistic relationship between the individual/family and organizations. It is a two-way relationship. If families raise children well, then organizations will be managed well. If not, then organizations will make many mistakes. This is recently (2016-2018) evident with the egregious decisions at the highest corporate executive levels in Wells Fargo and Volkswagen.

Organizations are an invention of people, and therefore dependent upon the quality of decisions made by those who execute decisions for their organization. When we give the illustration above deeper thought some very large insights become visible. Ironically, in developed and complex societies no thought is ever given to sustaining the species. We take that for granted. What we fear is the collapse of our societies and communities that would threaten the collapse of our families and our way of life. The irony of it all is that no one ever really gives any thought to the sustainability of our societies and communities that support the well being and lifestyles of our families. In other words, no one has really given much thought to make a decision about the social sustainability of the family AND society.

The Missing Factor for attaining social sustainability. The organic decision-making tree includes all of the players who make the decisions that affect our species, our way of life, and the well being of our families, communities, and societies. It illustrates a system of decision-making that is necessary to sustain our families, communities, and societies into a far distant future. What is missing are the criteria, or rules, for the moral and ethical decisions that will keep (sustain) families and organizations of our communities and societies running smoothly so that everyone arrives in the far distant future with the same or better quality of life as we have today. When that is in place, then the primary elements social sustainability will have been put into place.

How the Seven Values, Innate Moral Definitions, Ethics Statements, and Expressed Ethics are involved as the criteria for decision-making in the development of a socially sustainable and moral society will be discussed in the sessions ahead. For now, simply be aware of the dimensions of decision-making that are necessary to maintain our families, organizations, communities, and societies.

Values, Hierarchies of Need, and Social Change

Primary to understanding the necessity for the conscious evolution of societies, democracies, politics, and economies is to understand the “original cause” of social change that is everywhere around us. Causes of the incessant social, political, and economic changes that erupted in the 1800s and 1900s are the same causes that push social change today — fueled by our individual yearning for a better quality of life, to grow into the innate potential that we brought into life, and to equally enjoy an improving quality of life. Those values, today, as then, are always waiting for opportunities to come into expression.

Please see the Schematic on page 73. The motive power behind SOCIAL change is from our changing personal interpretations of the Seven Values, (Column #10), that have sustained our species. Our Interpretations of those Values, (Column #9), lead to an abundance of Beliefs and Assumptions, (Column #8), Expectations, (Column #7), and the Fulfillment Criteria, (Column #6), to satisfy those expectations.

If we are to discuss ethics in business, then we need to understand the progression of decision-making that lies between the desired results of our business ethic (criteria of fulfillment) and the seven values. These steps reveal the connectedness between those criteria and the seven innate values. It is our personal, corporate, or governmental Interpretations of those values that are often the cause of results that miss the mark of our expectations. The logic-progression of the Schematic easily clarifies the thought processes behind ethical decision-making, and for validating existing policies and statutes.

Our Personal Interpreted Values, (Column #9) provide the basis for an evolving hierarchy of needs described by Dr. Abraham Maslow. What we define as social change is the collective movement of vast numbers of people who are striving to satisfy their hierarchy of needs.

Dr. Maslow stated that as basic human needs are fulfilled more evolved needs become apparent to form a hierarchy of needs. What drives the evolution of the needs Dr. Maslow describes are the values that are innate to our species. Our hierarchy of needs evolve as our interpretations of our innate values evolve — we are still using the same value system as our ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago, but we interpret them in new ways. Collectively, as individuals improve the quality of their life and grow into their innate potential as others do, they create social change through their “demand” for new avenues and new means to fulfill their evolving needs. Perceptive marketers strive to be in touch and in tune with the “demand” of the public to assess any changes in the market for the potential of new services and products.

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While individual interpretations of the three primary values may vary wildly from one person to the next, vast numbers of people provide slow-moving, ongoing trends that stabilize the movement of a society over time. Social instability occurs when vast numbers of people sense that their ability to satisfy their needs is being threatened; and occurs rapidly and violently when they simultaneously sense that their ability is imminently threatened and there is no hope of preventing the threat.

2   Raphael, Daniel. 2015, Social Sustainability HANDBOOK for Community-Builders. p. 28-30.
3  Raphael, Daniel 2015 Social Sustainability HANDBOOK for Community-Builders