All Decisions Flow from Personal Values Systems.

Uncontrollable forces aside, pain is the consequence of a personal decision. Though we often speak of group decisions, they should be seen for what they are–the totality of individual decisions. Quite often, even "group" decisions are arrived at as a result of a single key individual’s decision. The role of that person is that of "tipping" or "weighting" results in such a way that it is that person’s decision that is deciding. A 5-4 vote of the United States Supreme Court is but one example that readily comes to mind.

In the work in which I have been engaged since 1980, I have been concerned with the relationship between personal values systems and the decision-making process, which I term decisioning. As an economist, my major focus has been on the impact of personal values and decisions having to do with economic matters–of a public–as well as a private-sector nature. I, however, have done much work analyzing how personal values have played out in decisioning in other fields as well –the military, law, education, science, and industry. Regardless of the field, the same nexus exists in the decisioning process. I believe the work I have been doing has substantial implications for a methodological approach in the field of Panetics.

Every decision starts from a perception of what is right in a particular set of circumstances. Based on what is believed to be right, there is usually a series of solutions that comes to mind when a person is confronted by a problem. Relatively quickly--if a problem is one that has been encountered frequently, and dealt with successfully--assumptions are made as to what will probably ensue if the same "action policy" is adopted. Based on those assumptions, a "policy" is set and carried out. In the event of new problems, more time may be required in assessing the proper solution, that is, determining what is "right," what assumptions are fitting, and finally, the most valid solution. This relationship, between values, assumptions and policy, I refer to as "VAP".

Values Systems Are Not Fixed.

In all of those instances where the word "right" is used, what is being reflected–in reality–is a values system. An individual’s perception of right or wrong reflects that person’s values system. Contrary to popular misconception, however, a personal values system is not fixed.

Earlier, I stated that "Every decision starts from a perception of what is right in a particular set of circumstances." Personal values systems are Hierarchical in nature. Decisions that are difficult to make -- and take more than the usual amount of time -- are only so because they usually call for a re-arrangement of the values in a personal Hierarchy of Values. A painful experience. The longer the decision process takes, the greater the degree of pain being caused by the re-arrangement of values in the hierarchy.

The Thorny Problem of Measurement.

The imagined necessary nexus between numbers and knowledge is a long and--unfortunately–well-credentialed one. Witness these two respectable evidences of lineage:

"Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." (Inscription above Plato's academy)

"He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant that the diagonal of a square is incommensurate with its side." (Plato, quoted in "Memorabilia Mathematica", by R. Moritz.)

The question of "How much pain?" poses a very difficult problem for Paneticists. And for those Paneticists who have been trained in physical sciences, it is all the more painful. To use a definition of pain based on a "toothache pain-unit" is problematical. Depending on an individual’s threshold of pain--which is controlled by bio-chemical characteristics that vary with each individual--each toothache is experientially defined differently by each sufferer. To a large degree, we are trapped by genetics. But this problem of objective measurement need not be crippling in the development of Panetics, I believe. Paneticists will continue to search for increasingly effective techniques and units of measurement that describe the infliction and evidences of pain. Progress will come. But we must also begin to look to other methodological means of developing Panetics into an effective tool for analyzing the infliction and control of pain.

A very substantial body of knowledge and insight has been achieved in the absence of quantitative techniques. The future of Panetics will depend on developing a simultaneous, two - track methodological approach. On one track will be continuing efforts to develop a credible source of quantitative data, capable of satisfying a quantitative model. On a second track will be a methodology anchored in the use of a values-oriented model. In this respect, Panetics is not unlike some other disciplines. Let us examine three groups of disciplines.

Group I. Most–not all–of the problems of concern to physicists, engineers, chemists and geologists can be addressed by the use of quantitative techniques plus insights and visions with no quantitative anchor.

Group II. Most of the problems of concern to theologians, counselors, ethicists and lawyers, cannot be addressed largely by quantitative techniques. Values figure heavily in the methodologies employed in these disciplines, and is frankly acknowledged to be the case.

Group III. Most of the problems of concern to economists, sociologists, psychologists, historians and anthropologists find quantitative techniques to be of great value, but also often find such techniques to be more cosmetic than substantive or of more limited use than generally supposed. Witness the current debate over the accuracy and credibility of the consumer price index. Values are acknowledged to play critical roles in all of these disciplines -- though clumsily and often inarticulately in the case of economics.

The point is that perfectly reputable areas of knowledge–whose contributions have radically reduced vast areas of ignorance–do not always have a satisfactory armamentarium of quantitative techniques or models. Credible anecdotal information, historically derived insights, logic, well-informed opinion are all sources of information and knowledge that have long been looked to successfully as a basis for intelligent decision-making. Taxonomic devices have been of inestimable help to intelligent, perceptive researchers capable of ordering, evaluating, synthesizing and using non-quantitative information in arriving at significant, important results–and new knowledge. Values and Panetics.

The work done by the psychologist Milton Rokeach can be of major help in moving Panetics ahead as a tool for analyzing how values lead to decisions that increase or lessen conditions of pain. Rokeach observed: ...the number of human values are small, the same the world over, and capable of different structural arrangements, that they are the resultants of societal demands and psychological needs, that they are learned and determined by culture, society, society's institutions, and personal experience, that they are determinants in turn of attitudes, judgments, choices, attributions, and actions, that they are capable of undergoing change as a result of changes in society, situation, self-conceptions, and self-awareness, and finally, that changes in values represent central rather than peripheral changes, thus having important consequences for other cognition and social behavior.

Rokeach identified 36 values, half of which he labeled "Terminal," the others he labeled "Instrumental." Terminal values are long-term in nature and viewed as goals. Being a virtuous person is a terminal value. Instrumental values are those that are necessary in helping to achieve a terminal value. Honesty would certainly be necessary to achieve the goal of being a virtuous person and thus would be an instrumental value.

For the purposes of this brief paper, it would be too time consuming to explore at length how Panetics could be -- at least partially -- moved ahead by means of a values-based methodology. A few examples may suffice to catalyze a more general discussion among Paneticists regarding values and Panetics.

What/Why Training.

If we are to train people to recognize the relationship between their values, their decisions and the pain that may be inflicted or alleviated as a result of their decisions, we must start with the individual and his or her personal Values Hierarchy and how they "play out" in real situations. In all educational institutions, in all courses, for students of all ages, teachers could begin to design the teaching process so as to draw the students' attention to the relationship between values and the subject matter of the course. In the early grades, a teacher might focus not only on "what" a child in the class would do if a friend were to lose a lunch or be picked on by a bully, but "why" s/he did what s/he says s/he would do. I have used this approach in teaching a graduate course in macroeconomic theory. In looking at tax or fiscal policies, I not only discuss the economic aspects of alternative policies, but also the possible personal values that help to explain the final decisions made by those involved in making those policies. During class discussions, I go to great lengths to draw students out in their thinking about why they prefer one "economic" policy alternative to another, leading them to discover for themselves how often the real source of their decision reflects a Values Hierarchy based more on non-economic values than on economic ones. Student reaction is usually that of observing aloud " I never thought about it that way."

In teaching, equal emphasis should be placed on the "why" as well as on the "what." We should be taught as early as possible that a "what" always implies a "why" plus consequences–that can produce new levels of pain, higher or lower. By coupling what/why and the consequences of a decision, we are consciously seeking to establish a pattern that automatically comes to link values to actions. As the "why" is highlighted and clarified for different types of situations, we begin to understand that a Hierarchy of Values may indeed change as situations change. Political hacks and idealogues have a field day with those for whom reality is always black or white. The view that "People who do not think as we do must be wrong," can be sold more easily to those who have never had to think-through horns-of-dilemma situations, consciously determining the "cost/pain" of a value, than to those who have, since childhood, been linking what they have done with why they did it.

The beauty of Francis Bacon's statement, "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties," is that any certainty comes to be seen as necessarily following the result of questioning. Learning to see questioning (uncertainty) as a part of normal living, better prepares us to cope more effectively when confronted with the need to change. This is but a short step from flexibility–the primary coping value.

A Panetics that utilizes a values methodology, can be used to educate Teachers and parents to think in terms of "what/why" as a means of beginning to understand better how they should relate to each other in joint efforts to improve the educational system. A likely vehicle for introducing these two critical groups into VAP as a necessary area of "adult education" would be PTA meetings. How better to focus on the subject of shared responsibilities for a child's education than clarifying and evaluating the values and assumptions behind decisions having to do with curricula content, a longer school year, bussing, school regulations, disciplinary measures and T.V. hours? How such questions are resolved may be secondary in value to what is learned in the process of coming to understand the participants’ Values Hierarchies and the pain they inflict or alleviate.

The highest priority should be to bring people together over important issues behind which value-differences are the really significant basis for misunderstanding and conflict. In industry and government agencies, Human resources departments are the logical focal point for values, assumptions and policy training. Existing case studies are a fertile source of training materials. Every case study previously used by business organizations, the military services, university courses (in almost every field, including the sciences) can be viewed anew from the perception of personal values systems and the impact on the inflicting or alleviating of pain. The need for new teaching materials is minimal. What is needed is training in the values, assumptions and policy method for analyzing processes of decision.

Studies and term papers can examine business, military, governmental, historical and science issues, for example, with a methodology that focuses on personal Values Hierarchies that drive decisions and affect policy formulation. In that process, what would become unavoidable is the link between personal values and outcomes--including the pain produced or reduced. As the discipline of Panetics advances in fundamental sophistication and development of quantitative tools, so much the better. But lacking that stage of development thus far, other important methodological advances can–and should –be linked with Panetics nonetheless.