- Enjoying Life
- Asserting Individuality
- Exerting Control
- Accruing Recognition
- Sustaining Community
- Embracing Oneness
Primal Values are the overarching values evident in all cultures. Two are self-focused, prioritised by individuals focused on enjoying life and leisure and asserting their independence. Two are emergence-focused, prioritised by those seeking to accrue recognition and gain a measure of control over their lives or circumstances. The other two are outward-focused values, prioritised by people keen to maintain their group or culture’s customs and assets, and highlight the interconnectedness of all life.
The Primal Values motivate our interactions with others and the environment.
The Inward-focused values
Almost all humans want to live longer, while maintaining – and increasing – their sense of well-being. We want to live in a comfortable, stimulating environment. We want our necessities provided – although there are almost as many opinions about the nature of these as there are people alive. We also want a degree of independence. Some people want complete autonomy over every aspect of their lives, others need only a little. But we all want it to some degree.
These desires are inward-focused. Activities that address them will have little effect on anyone else’s satisfaction with life.
Advancing inward-focused values reinforces an individual’s sense of self worth and well-being.
Enjoying Life
Individuals want to survive – as long and healthily as possible. This value, while always important, might not be pursued consciously by an individual until they are reminded of the shortness of life by, say, a cancer diagnosis. Day to day, individuals pursue comfort. They will act to better their living conditions when possible, look for opportunities to enjoy entertainment, and take time to appreciate the beauty and artistic expression in their environment.
The wide range of casual leisure activities described in Careers in Serious Leisure: From Dabbler to Devotee in Search of Fulfilment, by Robert Stebbins, encompasses some of the many ways people choose to pursue Living Comfortably. As everyone has a different definition for ‘getting by’, based on their experiences and aspirations, this value has a different meaning for us all, too.
Someone wealthy who loses their fortune in the sharemarket may well think themselves very hard done by when they have to sell the beach house and forgo expensive wine and nights at the theatre. Others might celebrate when they manage to buy a small, plain home, as it will provide comfort and security they may have feared they could not attain.
Key elements:
Pursuing Longevity
Wanting sustenance and adequate shelter. Wanting to avoid threats and hazards where possible.
Increasing Well-Being
Wanting sufficient resources, including links with others, to ensure a comfortable and stable future.
Indulging Whims and Tastes
Wanting intimacy, entertainment, recreation – and treats.
Asserting Individuality
Individuals will feel their individuality strengthened when they identify personally-pleasing styles or designs and are able to wear or use items that embody these; or when they enjoy experiences they think are adventurous or decadent; or when they develop and express their views.
Everyone values their separate identity. People start saying ‘No!’ in infancy, and will prioritise improving their sense of identity whenever they feel their individuality getting lost or subdued within their group or culture. Their sense of well-being will drop if this – or any value – feels insufficiently upheld.
Key elements:
Increasing Well-Being
Wanting immersion in cultural activities, arts or sciences. Wanting to experience beauty in people and the environment.
Indulging Whims and Tastes
Wanting to take risks, seek new thrills, and enjoy luxuries.
Developing Independence
Wanting to choose when and how to act, to clarify vision, internalise uniqueness and live authentically.
The Emergence-focused values
In moments when individuals are not focused on Enjoying Life, or Asserting Individuality – because those values feel adequately advanced – they will pursue emergence values.
Emergence begins when individuals start to intentionally cause change in their environment. They exert control over either the timing or nature of events that affect them. They begin to offer opinions and take actions that impact others.
Individuals sometimes choose to impact their life path by upholding values through what Stebbins (2004) terms serious leisure.
“Some of the defining characteristics of serious leisure are high identification of the participants with the activity, a need to persevere, personal effort based on gathering knowledge, skill, experience, and durable benefits, such as personal development and fulfilment.”
During their human journey, some individuals will stand up and make decisions that affect a whole community, and others will design or construct things or take command. Everyone has a different level of desire for emergence.
Exerting Control
Individuals will feel their control over the future strengthen when they make lifestyle and career choices for themselves, discover more about the state of their community or culture, and grow their skills through study and practice.
Control does not necessarily mean ‘over others’. It means control over the actions that cause change, which for an individual alone could be simply a satisfactory level of autonomy and enough resources to make the choices they prefer. Increased knowledge helps with that aim, as does a sense of independence.
Key elements:
Developing Independence
Wanting to be adaptable and effective. Wanting to strengthen self-discipline and resourcefulness.
Expanding Knowingness
Wanting to find out what is happening. Wanting insight and certainty.
Effecting Change
Wanting the skills to create impact. Wanting opportunities to use knowledge usefully.
Accruing Recognition
Individuals will feel appreciated and recognised more when they develop relationships with others through serving them in some way, and when they strive to understand other perspectives and points of view.
Recognition can be satisfied by receiving praise for small things, although some individuals may crave honours all their lives, and constantly yearn for high-profile or influential appointments and more letters after their names.
Key elements:
Increasing Knowingness
Wanting to sense the right way to go. Wanting to infer reality from experience and discern wisdom.
Effecting Change
Wanting a reputation for usefulness, initiative and achievement. Wanting to show dignity, responsibility and leadership – and highlight any contributions.
Building Relationships
Wanting to show devotion, allegiance, and persistence – and create impact in the community.
The Outward-focused values
In moments when individuals feel they have adequate Control and Recognition, they will look fully outward, desiring to serve the greater community.
Some individuals will want to have a huge impact and may, for example, volunteer in projects overseas, others will be satisfied that they have adequately supported their culture after donating a little to the occasional fundraiser.
People look outward when they recognise that a greater focus on others brings more fulfilment. Homo sapiens is a social species; each individual has an instinctive want to interact with others and the wider environment on some level.
Sustaining Community
Individuals will feel their bonds with others strengthen when they keep their word and commitments, use their resources to make a difference in their community, and support traditions and customs. In every community, people will agree that these things matter – but there will be uncountable shades of opinion about how much they matter.
When individuals seek new connections, it is due to their want to aid and be aided to a degree – perhaps a large degree – during their human journey.
A ‘community’ could simply be a domestic partnership. It could be a team at work or a social group. Some individuals feel connected to the entirety of mankind, and everyone’s common asset – the world itself, with all it contains.
Key elements:
Building Relationships
Wanting stronger family and community bonds; wanting friendships. Wanting to demonstrate empathy, caring, openness and diplomacy.
Conserving Common Assets
Wanting cultural traditions, customs and laws upheld – and the legitimacy of faith acknowledged. Wanting to use resources sustainably.
Honouring Others
Wanting to help advance goals, while showing loyalty, dependability and commitment. Wanting to demonstrate integrity, trustworthiness and wholeheartedness.
Embracing Oneness
Individuals will feel strengthening connections to others when they encourage everyone affected by issues to participate in resolving them, promote unity and peace, and demonstrate love by gifting resources and sharing opportunities.
Through altruistic actions such as contributing to pollution-minimising activities, individuals send a clear message that they consider the priorities of the whole more important than their own.
Key elements:
Conserving Common Assets
Wanting to maintain the natural environment for future generations. Wanting dialogue between cultures – and acceptance, unity and serenity.
Honouring Others
Wanting tolerance, inclusiveness, fairness and justice. Wanting to reflect vulnerability, gratitude, and respect.
Embodying Selflessness
Wanting to care, forgive, sacrifice, and love. Wanting to be generous, compassionate and kind.
The Human Values Hierarchy
Subdividing the human values canon into its component parts illustrates how motivation in a given individual changes from inward-focused to outward-focused as their awareness about the interconnectedness of everything increases. The Values Hierarchy adds to our understanding of the differences between people.
Each of the six foundational value definitions has a subjective aspect. Two people who value material wealth, for example, will have differing ideas about the meaning of ‘wealthy’. Some concepts of wealth might not even include money, although most first world citizens would consider the two ideas overlapping.
As all humans value the six foundational principles shown in the hierarchy to some degree, the question is not: “What are your main values?” Rather, it is: “Which of these values matters most right now?” The value that matters most in the mind in any given moment is the one that influences action in that moment.
For example:
In the morning, with an important meeting imminent, an individual motivated by Accruing Recognition wants to appear knowledgeable and influential. They choose clothes accordingly. They might ALSO be concerned about the cold, valuing survival, too – an aspect of Enjoying Life – but they will think about style first, on this occasion. The individual’s ‘purpose’, in that moment of choosing clothes, is to emerge well. They may well have a different purpose later in the day.
The hierarchy is represented by a series of ‘bubbles’, one for each value. Activities shown on the edge of two bubbles support the values in both.
The hierarchy is a continuum, with no definite borders between each value. The hierarchy is not a ranking of ‘best’ to ‘worst’ value. It is a ranking of completely self-focused: survival-ensuring activities, to completely oneness-focused: altruism-pursuing activities. Each individual will have an underlying Primal Purpose, a blend of their most important valuyes’s dominant value in any given moment could be anywhere on the hierarchy; desires to Enjoy Life and Embrace Oneness might both motivate an action on the same day.