Comments on: On Values https://techandsocialchange.mit.edu/2018/10/08/on-values/ MAS.S63 Fall 2018 | Wednesdays 10-1 in E15-341 Wed, 10 Oct 2018 14:41:22 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 By: Ken Arnold https://techandsocialchange.mit.edu/2018/10/08/on-values/#comment-2137 Wed, 10 Oct 2018 14:41:22 +0000 http://techandsocialchange2017.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=1020#comment-2137 You actually put forth two values: honesty and justice. Honesty, especially the way you flesh it out (e.g., “some of my choices are not just”, “some of my actions are not consistent”), strikes me as powerfully liberating from the tyranny of image, even the image of being a “good person”. That kind of honesty is essential if we are to have any hope of actually acting in any way that isn’t just engineering how other people think about us. To have any hope of actually doing justice. I also hear in the way you word your examples a value of humility: you’re basically saying “I’m going to make mistakes”, “I can’t do everything”. That also might help keep you from the existential crisis of thinking that everyone is “only” in it for the PR!

I imagine you might propose something like a concert of honesty. The musicians would lead in speaking (or singing?) their reasons for doing what they’re doing, both the “I love what I’m doing” and “I gotta put food on the table” (and perhaps “why don’t you people pay us!?”)… but somehow you’d get everyone to reveal their own true rationales, even for being there. If done right, this could be healing. But it would probably be a one-time thing: we do that, but then go back to our same lives. What would it take to actually change both our selves and our systems?

]]>