Last One In

Here's a question, if perhaps a somewhat abstract, or maybe even obtuse, one: What is the purpose of values?

At the end of March, I came across an article on Axios that proclaimed: "Rot of nation's core values quantified by single poll." (How's that for click-bait?) The article is a pious lament of the fact that the share of respondents who told a Wall Street Journal/National Opinion Research Center (NORC) survey that they found patriotism, religious faith, having children, community involvement, tolerance for others et cereta to be "very important" went down, while the number of respondents citing money as being "very important" went up. This, the author concludes, is evidence that "The poll quantifies a generational and political divide that shows a rot at the very soul of our nation."

First off, the nation's core values have likely always been in flux, especially if one measures them by how people actually behaved, rather than what they would tell someone else. The idea that all people should be treated equally before the law is, effectively, a rather new idea in the United States. Equality being an active value, rather than simply something that people paid lip service to, came about because people's understanding of their interests changed.

And "character" is determined by the way that people act in furtherance of their interests. If people can achieve their interests without seeing a need to be as outwardly (or even inwardly) patriotic as their parents or grandparents, why should this be considered some sort of national rot? Would I prefer that Americans were bigger on tolerance for others? Sure. But if it doesn't get people what they want (and in a society that exhibits low social trust, it clearly doesn't) then it's going to subside.

And that's the problem with the formulation of "a rot at the very soul of our nation." It relies on an understanding that the outward (and often very intolerant) religiosity, for instance, of prior generations of Americans was something they saw as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end that they found worthwhile. Birth rates aren't declining because of some sickness of the soul. Instead, children have gone from an economic necessity to an expensive luxury good. And some people have legitimately found ways to be happy and fulfilled in their lives without being parents. Why should this be considered a bad thing? It's not like the planet, or even the country is going to run out of children anytime soon. And if the nation had no problem importing millions of young families to settle them on land that had formerly been inhabited by the Native Americans, why is there a problem with allowing young families to come to the country now?

Treating core values (and the things that one may not want to be core values) as means, rather than ends, is the trick to keeping them healthy. Want more community involvement? Then community involvement has to come with benefits, and not simply people being shut out from things if they don't play ball. There really isn't a chicken and egg problem here. Piety simply has to make way for understanding how people determine what's important to them.