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I'm enjoying The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. A wonderful book written by a wonderful person. It's one of those rare business books that continue to improve as you read.
And recently I came across this passage. It's lengthy. But, it's important to consider in light of our healthcare reform debate.
Douglas Smith, in On Value and Values, suggests that... society has lost sight of the importance of 'values' and instead pursued 'value': "Value arises in conversations about economics, finance, shopping, investment, business, and markets. People worry about getting value for money or shareholder value or market value. The use value to describe business or economic prospects. Value connotes a pointed estimation of current or anticipated worth never too distant from monetary equivalence. There is no value that is not a dollar value.
Smith notes that the meaning of the plural values is something very different from the singular value. "Values are estimations not of worth but of worthwhileness. Unlike value, talk of values ignores money; it opines on timeless appraisals instead of transient ones. There is a deep backward- and forward-looking quality to values. If value is what makes us wealthy, the values we assume and regularly assert are what make us human.
Now, our culture has become obsessed with the single overriding value of winning.
As the screaming and shouting gets louder in the name of a healthcare reform debate, the ability to look backward or forward even superficially to stands taken but a few months ago become impossible. What's lost in these dreadful escalations of rhetoric (I'm being generous) is our ability to converse from a common appraisal of our shared values as a nation, as a people, as families and neighbors, co-workers and fellow citizens. Our culture's obsession over winning at any cost manifests itself as a collective and growing memory-loss of what we share in common with each other, those values that make us... human.
And recently I came across this passage. It's lengthy. But, it's important to consider in light of our healthcare reform debate.
Douglas Smith, in On Value and Values, suggests that... society has lost sight of the importance of 'values' and instead pursued 'value': "Value arises in conversations about economics, finance, shopping, investment, business, and markets. People worry about getting value for money or shareholder value or market value. The use value to describe business or economic prospects. Value connotes a pointed estimation of current or anticipated worth never too distant from monetary equivalence. There is no value that is not a dollar value.
Smith notes that the meaning of the plural values is something very different from the singular value. "Values are estimations not of worth but of worthwhileness. Unlike value, talk of values ignores money; it opines on timeless appraisals instead of transient ones. There is a deep backward- and forward-looking quality to values. If value is what makes us wealthy, the values we assume and regularly assert are what make us human.
Now, our culture has become obsessed with the single overriding value of winning.
As the screaming and shouting gets louder in the name of a healthcare reform debate, the ability to look backward or forward even superficially to stands taken but a few months ago become impossible. What's lost in these dreadful escalations of rhetoric (I'm being generous) is our ability to converse from a common appraisal of our shared values as a nation, as a people, as families and neighbors, co-workers and fellow citizens. Our culture's obsession over winning at any cost manifests itself as a collective and growing memory-loss of what we share in common with each other, those values that make us... human.
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