Values

I am doing an experiment with trying to clearly define my values so that I can know when I am living up to them.

The psychologist Carl Rogers described the idea of congruence/incongruence. It’s roughly the difference between your lived self and your ideal self. It’s the difference between “I am” and “I should”. Incongruence, a large gap between the two, leads to a tension between what you are doing and what you think you should be doing. I believe that everyone will be happier and experience more of their potential if they are living and growing in line with their ideals.

My Values

Equity

• Everyone should have the means to live a healthy and meaningful life.
• This applies to people now and in the future.
• Everyone should have a fair voice in decisions that affect them.

Integrity

• Take responsibility for your own actions.
• Hold others accountable and responsible for their actions.
• Give honest feedback.
• Take the time to do good work and be proud of it.
• Be your authentic self.

Sustainability and long-term thinking

• Think not about the short- or long-term, but about the equilibrium, the forever-term.
• Do not sacrifice the future for the present.
• Do not sacrifice the present for the future.

Cooperation over competition

• We build better when we work together.
• We can challenge each other without having to compete.
• Resources should not be scarce.
• Share information, materials and goods.
• Hold others responsible for sharing alike.

Self-improvement

• Be curious and motivated to learn and understand.
• Be open to feedback.
• Seek to understand.
• Embrace failure as an opportunity to learn.
• Take the time to review and retrospect.
• Help others learn and grow by giving them resources, training and feedback.

Self-reliance

• Enable everyone to work with minimal interruption by reducing the dependence on each other.
• We should work together but not be dependent on one another.
• Many strong units weakly coupled are more resilient than rigid or hierarchical structures.
• Invest in your health and stability.

Corollaries

Environmentalism

• We must preserve our planet so that future people will have at least the same opportunities we currently do.

Anti-capitalism

• Modern capitalism is a system that is built on and perpetuates inequity.
• Modern capitalism creates and exploits dependency.