The Stomach

"When God first made man, man just laid around like a pillow. He wouldn't do anything! God regretted the decision to make such a useless creature. So he decided to give man a stomach. In this way, man would experience hunger. The hunger would motivate man to act. Since the time God gave man his stomach, the stomach has never been satisfied. And so we have greed."

A student shared the above story with me a few days ago, first shared with her by her grandmother.  She came to the CFI for help with structuring a paper in response to this question: Why is it so hard for humans to check their greed, even when they know the impact it is having on each other and on the environment? Why can we not change direction?

Schwartz's Circumplex of Values

We ended up in a fascinating conversation about Tim Kasser's work on Schwartz's theory of a circumplex of values. Kasser's research on materialism shows how misguided we are when we try to, for example, get people to start recycling or buy less by appealing to "Self-enhancement" values that have to do with power, achievement, or hedonism. See, for example, H&M's efforts to motivate people to recycle H&M clothing in exchange for a $5 voucher or 15% off their next purchase. The method works, temporarily, BUT every appeal to self-enhancement values ends up simply reinforcing those values, at measurable cost to the self-transcendence values on the opposite side of the circumplex. Instead, when we try to nudge behavior by emphasizing our interdependence, we reinforce values of universalism and benevolence, causing a measurable decrease in the value for self-enhancement. The basic premise of Kasser's and Schwartz's work is that we all possess all these values in some portion, and we can be consciously or subconsciously steered towards a greater emphasis, tilting the circle in one direction or another. 

I'm eager for educators to figure out how we might cultivate a deep understanding of interdependence from as young an age as possible, so that we actively grow young people's sense of responsibility and connection to others. Incidentally, this may also lead to a deeper sense of belonging for our students, possibly mitigating the widening crisis of anxiety and depression teenagers currently face.