Adaptive Freedom

There are at least five related ways to help you clarify your personal values:

1. You can accept or be predominantly influenced by the values shared and applied by your family, social, religious, cultural or political group.

2. You can accept universal values to which most of humankind subscribe regardless of their race or creed, such as the WEF-Facebook study, or the doctrines of the major religions, or the secular Universal Declaration of Duties (not to be confused with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

3. As a general non time-limited exercise in values clarification the following novel exercise from the psychotherapist Richard O’Connor in his book Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection Between Depression, Anxiety and 21stCentury Illness  is worth doing:

List up to ten things that make living worthwhile. Do this quickly and without any thought. Allow these ideas to emerge directly from the nonconscious mind. Put the list away, wait for a week and do the exercise again and then wait another week and do it a third time. The second and third times do not look at your previous lists. When you are finished compare the three lists and identify common trends. Then put the combined list in order of importance based on what you feel is most important. The first four or five will most likely form your core values.

4. Start with a long list of general values, and pick those that are important to you. This may allow the nonconscious to select values you think you should have, rather than those really important to you so when you have a list of 5-10 values start to assess them consciously. There are many values lists on the Internet.

5. Assess which value is the best choice by how complete it appears, how well it fits together from all perspectives and after considering all inputs and angles. A good rule of thumb is the way the particular choice seems to come together as a whole. The choice is not just the sum of its parts but it fits together and holds together more or less successfully as an orderly and reasonably logical whole.

You may form your values in your mind but you can only realize them when they are tested in the world. You may accept your values from the world but you will not truly believe them until you internalize them in your mind. It’s a totally interconnected self-sustaining process.

Values may be conveniently divided into personal and universal:

Personal values arise from a process of values identification and clarification. They do not emerge from a vacuum. They will be informed by your education, formation and social interaction. But to become yours, for you to own them and live them, you must clarify which values resonate with you at the deepest level of your being, and then honor them.

Universal values exist for the common good and to advance the welfare of all humankind. A Worldwide poll in 2010 for the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Facebook found that most people consider honesty, integrity and transparency the most important values in their private and professional lives. Over a quarter reported that respect for the dignity, rights and opinions of others was the next most important value, followed by just under a fifth who viewed the impact of their actions on the well-being of others as a key value. Environmental issues also surfaced as a new element in what is considered of universal importance with seven percent identifying the preservation of the environment as a universal value.

To act rightly and promptly means that you have a clear inner perspective on what you value and what universal values you esteem. You have worked it out in your own mind to your own satisfaction after a thorough analysis and tested it out in practical experience.

A free, authentic and successful life is not a values-free zone. Realizing your highest potential is not achieved at any cost or without respecting the rights and needs of others. It requires the maximum of self-assertion and the minimum of selfishness. It needs to be grounded in your own freely determined values, implemented with honor and integrity and based on your natural disposition towards what is right—and what is right is what is good.
Values are principles that guide your interaction with others and with the world. Since the primal driving force in human nature is towards goodness it follows that your nature is basically values-based in the broadest sense.
Values describe the fundamental essence of the human desire to seek its own ultimate being. They don’t limit freedom, they define it. They are about accepting responsibility for your actions and accepting the consequences of those actions.
Freedom and authenticity arise from acting in a way that is consistent with your values—acting from the best part of you in a way that leads to harmony rather than conflict with your inner nature and with others.
The idea that freedom is the origin of value is a key element of Adaptive Freedom. In fact there may well be only one truly universal value—freedom itself—all the rest we need to discover or clarify ourselves.
This implies that you do not accept your values solely from the cultural or ethical standards of society, or your religious, political or moral beliefs. What you hold as truth in your life comes both from universally accepted standards and what you discover through experience, observation and experiment to be true. You glean these from the choices you make, the actions you take, the responsibility you carry and the consequences you accept.

The prevailing disposition of human nature is essentially positive, directed towards harmony and a sense of internal unity, constantly seeking union or wholeness in and with other beings and the world.
Despite the evidence of some human behavior, at the central core of our being is the desire to seek what is laudable, hopeful or “to the good” for ourselves and others. Our essential nature urges us to do what is pleasing, valuable or useful both for ourselves and others.

As the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza wrote “You neither want nor strive for anything because you judge it to be good. On the contrary, you consider something to be good because you strive for it, want it and desire it.” What is good is right and what is right is good, and these constitute the essence of authenticity.
In many ways what is good is also what is whole or complete. Some use the term ‘wholesome’ to describe something that is physically or morally good, that it exhibits soundness in body, mind or composition. The sense of separation within us, and between us and others, and the emphasis in the world on separation and difference denies the unity and interdependence that is the true nature of the universe.
Good therefore, is right because it affirms and accepts our wholeness within the diversity and multiplicity of a world which we co-create daily with our fellow human beings. At a personal level this is more than just being good or doing good, but in its truest form is compassionate love for yourself and others.
The opposite of good is evil. Paradoxically evil is nothing other than a rejection of the good. Everything that exists comes originally from good. Everything is in some way good, and evil only exists in a secondary juxtaposition to good. Goodness is innate—evil isn’t.
The Christian saint and philosopher, Augustine of Hippo said that “those things we call evil are defects in good things and quite incapable of existing in their own right outside good things.” Those defects testify to the natural goodness of things.
According to Carl Jung evil is not a natural thing, it is the name given to the state of being deprived of goodness. Therefore there can be no good without evil, and there can be no evil without good. Good is what seems suitable, acceptable or valuable to you and evil is the opposite. Good is the inherent nature of things and evil is a defect in that nature.

The way of authenticity is grounded in the natural tendencies of human nature which we all share. These are the essence of the human person. They make us what we are, and in the appropriate quantity contribute to our wellbeing and happiness. There are 15 of them in 5 general categories. Each of us is formed by a unique union of these elements. No two humans have exactly the same combination of ingredients in exactly the same quantities.
The mixing of the compound takes place in your mind. All of these ingredients are psychological not physical features. They exist for the most part outside your conscious awareness and if you become aware of them at all it is in the form of a powerful longing or the feeling that something is missing.
They give purpose and direction to your behavior, motivate you to take action, and to pursue certain types of goals and avoid others. They are:

Category A - Basic Ingredients
1. Nurturance: To be cared for and to care for others. To be nourished in a caring way by our parents and/or primary carers is vital in childhood and a key indicator of our later development. As adults our children and the needs of others awaken our concern and interest and a desire to provide care and nurture for them.

2. Safety and Security: Personal safety is a deeply rooted instinct going back to when our ancient ancestors were in constant fear of attack from predators. Without safety life is threatened. Security is partly to do with this but nowadays it is also to do with emotional and financial stability--having sufficient to meet our needs.

3. Health: Good physical and mental health is a necessary prerequisite for all of the ingredients. Some people do of course survive and prosper in poor health with little prospect of attaining good health. But it is not the optimum state. To thrive and grow good health is important. This is an ingredient which is not entirely subjective. Others can discern the state of our health and there are accepted and useful universal guidelines for the maintenance of good health.

4. Play: This is the ingredient most evident in children—activity guided by imagination rather than by rules. Play is the part of us that seeks pleasure and enjoyment. It can be organised in the form of games or sporting activities or hobbies. But it also includes laughter, having a good time, relaxing, and light-hearted recreational activity for diversion or amusement.

Category B - Relational Ingredients
5. Affection: To love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others is utterly fundamental to human existence. It includes the desire to be liked, to please other people, and meet the expectations of others. And it goes all the way to the deepest feelings of desire, attraction, passion, regard and affection for that special person whom we love and who loves us in equal measure.

6. Acceptance: We like to be liked. The respect and recognition of others is important to our wellbeing. It is good to be to be accepted and valued by others. Equally self-acceptance is essential to our maturity.

7. Affiliation: Active engagement with others is essential to acceptance but it is also intrinsic to our nature. To feel a sense of belonging, whether from our family, social group, colleagues, culture, religious group, professional organization, sports team, online community, or whatever other context is utterly central to human nature.

Category C - Developmental Ingredients
8. The thirst for Knowledge is a fundamental need of the human person that has persisted throughout time. It is intrinsic to our nature as essentially thinking animals. It is not enough for us to be and do but we also need to know—to understand why we are and why we act as we do.

9. Achievement orients us towards success, accomplishment, and overcoming obstacles. It entails consistently setting and meeting challenging but realistic goals. It is influenced by both an internal drive for action and the expectations of others.

10. Individuation is the need to which most of this book is directed—an underlying and irresistible urge toward the fulfillment of our inherent and highest potential. Individuation is the vast power and potential inside every person waiting to be revealed and realized.

11. Transcendence: the need to seek experience and awareness beyond the normal or physical level. This is realized by some in excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits, and by others as the possibility of spiritual transcendence in the modern world.

Category D - Power and Autonomy
12. The exercise of Personal Power is a basic necessity of a fully-functioning life. At its best power is both the natural companion and clearest mark of leadership. It is indicated by high levels of self-confidence, positive self-assertion, self-awareness, self-direction, competence, articulateness, communication and persuasive skills.

13. Autonomy (or our need for independence) is synonymous with freedom and individuality. It involves the exercise of self-direction and self-reliance, free will and the capacity for independent thought and action. Autonomy also entails our thirst for information, the need to ask questions and gain knowledge through learning and experience, and engage in analytical thinking.

Category E - Wellbeing and Self-worth
14. The state of Wellbeing or happiness is characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. This is the most prevalent desire in Western culture. We are instinctively driven by the desire for happiness in the sense of moving towards pleasure and away from pain or sadness. We innately know that happiness is good for us.

15. Self-worth directly contributes to wellbeing and defines the level of confidence we have in our own worth or abilities. It reflects our overall evaluation or appraisal of our own ‘value’ as a person and is synonymous with self-esteem and self-respect.

All of these ingredients of human nature apply in varying degrees to each of us. How to respond to them is a feature in one way or another of the Seven Pillars of the Freedom Code.