How can we sustain a Vision & Mission without values? In my book The Centaur Challenges (Los Desafíos del Centauro, (C) 2008 Editorial CCs, Madrid) I describe in more depth these core values. Here we have some of them
Meaning
It’s a cardinal value. How could we go on without a meaningful goal or purpose? Sometimes we can drown ourselves in daily activities or even problems so as to avoid this central issue: where are we going? What do we have that’s really worthy? As Don Juan in Castaneda’s book said, “Only he who has something to die for has something to live for”
Winning/winning/winning attitude
Or ecological winning, means that we pursue an harmonious outcome. Not only satisfaction for both parties involved; also the environment. There’s phrase which goes: the best way to eliminate an enemy forever… is to make him your friend!. Many times a bad outcome from confrontation or struggle comes because misunderstanding. So unnecessarily we lose the best results. But maybe the worst way to misunderstand is self ignorance and self lack of inner growth. Losing/losing, losing/ winning or even winning/losing attitudes comes from the idea of scarcity. There’s not enough for both of us, so only one will prevail. You can see that in Nature. Two baby birds push away from the nest their weaker brother, so they can get more food from their parents. I believe humanity is here to transcend Nature regarding those aspects. So triple winning attitude is a way to transcend Nature and still respect natural precepts.
Resacralization
Maslow spoke of desacralization, or cultural loss of the feeling of the Sacred. Sacred is whatever we feel as bigger than ourselves. So this core value is to recover the instinctive feeling of the Superior. It doesn’t necessarily means to believe in God or another deity. Sometimes these beliefs only hide precisely fear of the biggest, deepest realms of existence. We are just way too imprisoned within our own minds. To feel the Superior is to be free!
Joy
When we accomplish some goal, what do we do? The same as when we finish some important or difficult task. We celebrate. Celebration is an existential (for existential I mean something not rational but beyond rationality in a certain way) manner to say “life is worth living!” Many manifestations of art arise from this urge to celebrate. We need to experience joy, to feel pleasure and happiness. Without it everything else vanishes, losing brilliance. It’s only too sad that among many cultures joy, pleasure and happiness are not associated with inner growth and the drive to live, integrating polarities such as moral/instinctual, body/soul, I/us. Instead, dissociation wins and we have either sensual pleasure or competitive drive inflation. To enjoy both carnal AND spiritual matters is our trade.
Love
Is it neccesary to explain it? It´s interesting to think about the meaning of love in Spanish: amor. a: prefix meaning absense of something, and mor: from mortis, death. So amor means no death. The opposite of death is not life, as life and death are truly unseparable parts of an eternal cycle. The opposite of death, considering it as the final loss, is love, wich is the final trascendence.
Balance success/integrity
Success: to achieve our goals. Integrity: to observe our values. This, like many (or most) of the core values is an integrative one. Only being successful risks selling one’s own soul cheaply; on the other hand, just keeping integrity puts us, living in the middle of a complex society, in a situation of potential lacking of many obligatory needs. The real challenge is not to be successful and correct, but to wisely administrate our resources in order to achieve a satisfactory balance.
Harmony
Harmony means the expression of certain results according to certain laws. For example, the Golden Number is a measure of harmonious relationships of shape. It appears in such different structures varying from snail shells to galaxies. Harmony is not compromise, like “I-let-you-if-you-let-me” bargains, but rather the expression in human interaction of those same universal laws. We all have an intuitive feeling for harmony. Expressing harmony through our acts and deeds puts us in accordance with the working of the universe. The concept of Personal Supremacy means to become on top of others in order to gain advantage. It’s not bad to become the best we can, but this concept is based upon the idea of lacking, so it can’t go on indefinitely. Sooner or later struggle and violence will happen. Personal supremacy is not bad; only when it’s the only concept it becomes incomplete. We also need harmony to balance the picture.
High-Value Relationship
Being the motto of the site, this concept is maybe the most difficult challenge of all. To observe it and live a life among others gives us the extraordinary chance to develop high quality bonds and achieving extraordinary results. Warren Bennis in his book Creative Collaboration describes one typo of high-value relationships, goal-oriented. High-value relationships need our best part, it simply won’t happen if we just act the way we are. Focusing thusly we can transcend ourselves for a better ideal.
They are an organic system. As you see, these core values are integrated with one another. One goes with several others. For example, high value relationship can’t be complete without harmony. So you just need to observe them all, you can’t keep only one or two.
