Mary Gentile- Giving Voice to Values as a Reality that proves Possibility

So yeah, and then I mean, that's, I think, ultimately speaking to a bigger question, which is what is universally true about humans and human beings, right? And I think the big myth that we have is that we're not moral, that we're amoral.

But what you're unearthing here in those different examples, different cultures, different industries, is that there's a deep yearning.

And basically what Darwin wrote is like, we are a moral species.

But nobody knows that Darwin wrote this.

I didn't know it.

But it's like, yeah, everything else makes sense when you see ourselves as trying to grapple with these questions as how can we lead the good life together, right? because that is making us safer, that is making us procreate better, that's making life better, that's evolutionary advantageous.

Somehow we have lost complete sight of this simple insight, and we teach ourselves that these kind of values are secondary, they're unimportant, when they're actually the reason we as a species have survived, that we are ultimately not necessarily very good at giving voice to values in some way or, or acting on those, but that it's a deep, deep human desire.

The deserts would call it, I believe.

So what you, what, yeah, what, what, what, Well, I

think research is what's interesting is that, as you're just pointing out, you know, it's coming out of, I mean, biology, you know, that there are these human tendencies that are what enable us, have enabled us to survive as a species, you know, and a lot of it is science.

this interdependence and, you know, and that's at heart, that's love, right? I mean, it's a value of community.

And so it's not, so it's interesting you use the word moral because I was really struggling with the language when I was creating Giving Voice to Values because I'd been working in business schools and we were calling it business ethics and everybody saw it as a set of rules and constraints and business school students and business people, they're not thrilled with constraints.

They want to build things, they want to make money, they want to be successful and have these careers.

So I wanted to frame it in a way that it was more aspirational than constraints.

And so I ended up deciding, well, ethics, you know, you think of code of ethics, you think of these external set of rules.

And I wanted to think of something that felt like it was coming from what I want, from who I want to be.

And so that's why I used the language of values.

Now, of course, values is an overdetermined word, right? You can say, I value country and you value city, you know, it can be.

And so I, pardon me.

Shareholder value.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And so I decided, you know, I have to sometimes clarify, I'm really talking about moral values and that limits it to, you know, what the philosophers would call hyper norms, you know, so it's a much shorter list.

It's a much higher level list.

It's also a much more universal list.