I
have to start this blog with a big OOPS! Earlier this week when I posted my
other blog, I believe that I misinterpreted the instructions for the
assignment. This blog entry is supposed to piggyback on the last one so I may
have to get a little creative to make it work. Fortunately, one thing that I
LOVE about grad school versus undergrad is that the assignments are not just “check
the box” but rather are designed to encourage critical and creative thinking.
The most important thing is that we are enhancing our understanding of the
concepts. The instructions for my last blog were “Reflect on three of your
major protected values, support those values with at least three major beliefs
and show the pros and cons of each belief in terms of trade-offs you are
willing to make to support or not support that belief.” I thought that I did
just that because I identified my three most powerful protected values and then
supported those with my beliefs. However, this blog has me looking at the
concept map that I made…but I didn’t make a concept map. Also, a lot of what I
have been asked to discuss in this blog was actually discussed in my last blog.
What’s ultimately important is that I always act within the spirit of the
assignment. Again, that is what I love about grad school!
There’s
an author and psychologist at Harvard named Dan Gilbert that has some powerful
messages on decision making – namely on why we make poor decisions. The talk is
a longer one for a TED Talk but I think that it is worth watching. (The link
can be found in my references for this posting.) In his TED Talk (Gilbert,
2005), he first explains how our values change based on comparisons. One
example that he uses that really sticks out in my mind is a lottery. Imagine
that there are 10 tickets to a lottery. Most people would be willing to
purchase a ticket (depending on the reward to be gained) because their chance
is as good as any at winning. But what is you could purchase your ticket but
the other nine tickets were all purchased by one other person (meaning the same
other person)? Would you still buy the last ticket considering that the other
person has a 90% change of winning? The odds of you winning hasn’t change but
we now can compare our odds to someone else. The value that we now place on the
game has changed. This is true of all of our values. Of course this doesn’t
apply just to our odds of gain but rather when we compare our values to what we
can see around us, the actual values often change. For example, I really value
a clean apartment. I can’t stand clutter and dust but, like everybody, it gets
away from me sometimes. (That actually just triggered me to look around the
room. I guess I know how I will be spending the rest of the day!) However, have
you ever been to someone’s apartment and it looked like a tornado ripped
through there? When you get back home, you look around and think, “Hmmm, this
isn’t too bad after all”. I was in another apartment the other week that made
me think just that. I was so grateful to get back to my apartment which was
messy at the time because it was clean in comparison. The actual value that I
placed on cleaning my own apartment changed slightly at that point and it didn’t
seem quite as important to me but my environment hadn’t changed at all.
Gilbert
(2005) also discusses how we perceive value based on time. We are wired as
humans to focus on instant gratification so the father into the future that
something is the less we can see the relative value. To illustrate this, he
uses an example of two men standing side by side. One is significantly taller
than the other. As we zoom out, though, though their ratios never change, it
becomes more difficult to see the difference between them as they near the
vanishing point. The same concept is applied to the values that we hold. As we
consider what we would be willing to compromise (the trade-off (Hoch,
Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001)), the value is harder to see the father in the
future it is. For example, I am somewhat of a tree-hugger. I value recycling
and I go to great lengths to separate and clean my recyclable items so that I
can take them to the recycle room. However, I currently live on the 35th
floor so it takes a little bit of time to gather everything up, load it into
the elevator, ride down to the lobby, move over to the service elevator, ride
to the basement, then reverse the trip. Sometimes I am willing to accept the
trade-off of not recycling to save the five or six minutes that it takes to do
that. However, the father into the future that the decision is, the value of
those five or six minutes seems less relevant to me but so, too, does the value
of that single instance of recycling in the grand scheme of things. The value
of the action has not changed nor has the value of the time. The trade-off is
the same. It is just harder to see what difference the decision will make.
Let
me apply this to my own protected values. As a refresher from my last post, my
three most protected values are the right to free speech, being anti-abortion,
and being anti-death penalty for prisoners. My beliefs that support those
values are based on my religious beliefs, the belief that we all have a purpose
(a contribution to make), and the belief that life is just exciting
(exploration). Considering the thoughts of Dan Gilbert, is there anything that
may sway my protected values and cause me to be willing to accept a trade-off? The
only one of my protected values that I can see having a trade-off based on
immediate or past comparison would actually be the freedom of speech. I know
that this may sound a little shocking coming from a Soldier that has actually
fought for this right for others but when you compare this value with the value
of the safety of others, I would possibly be willing to accept a trade-off for
this value. I have been to many nations where the general population does not
have the right to free speech. Would it be great if they did have it?
Absolutely. But is it worth silencing the people if it means preserving an
entire society? Perhaps. (Notice that I did not say “yes” but only “perhaps”.)
The trade-off would have to be something extreme, though, like preventing a tyrannical
ruler from performing genocide. Remember that this very thing happened with
Saddam Hussein as he punished the Kurds when they pushed back against his
power. However, even as I sit here and write this, I would rather face death
than even be forced to be silenced. I believe it is best to not delete that
portion of the paragraph, though, because my blogs are my flowing thoughts
about the subject.
Dan
Gilbert said that if we cease to exist, it will be “because we underestimated the
odds of our pain, and overestimated the value of our present pleasures” (2005).
I don’t think that any of my protected values deal with pleasure. They deal
with fundamental human rights that absolutely cannot be violated. I am talking
about the right to life itself and to growing to our potential. Even viewing
the value of these rights in the future, I cannot imagine any trade-off that I
would ever be willing to accept. However, as I said in my last blog, I do
understand that there are people with very valid beliefs that contradict my own
on some of these values (particularly the abortion and death penalty issues). I
will civilly try to convince them otherwise but I know that this will be a
debate that will continue until we are no longer here. But ultimately, the
decisions that I make will never betray my own protected values. I would be
willing to trade my life to protect them.
Gilbert,
D. (2005, July). Dan Gilbert: Why we make
bad decisions [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness
Hoch,
S. J., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton on making
decisions. New York: Wiley.
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