5.3. What is valuable?
Threats to human well-being posed by climate change and the loss of biodiversity have brought environmental issues to the forefront of national and international politics. However, it has only been possible to stop harmful developments in some places. One reason for the continuing deterioration of the situation is the worldview where humans are understood as detached from nature, whereas nature is seen as a mere resource.
The poor state of nature, and the reasons behind it, thus become easy to grasp when we see it as a result of a combination between human-centred worldview, highly efficient technology, and a lack of understanding of the Earth’s ecological and physical systems. Likewise, the need to change the worldview becomes apparent. Therefore, in order to change systems, we need a broad cultural change.
Earlier in the course, it was mentioned that culture can be defined in many ways. Here, we understand culture broadly. Thus, by cultural change we refer to a large-scale change in values, lifestyles and beliefs, as well as in the habits and laws that rely on them.
In the previous section of the course, we also learned that cultural sustainability is sometimes considered the fourth pillar of sustainable development alongside the ecological, economic and social ones. Cultural sustainability, in a broad sense, can even be seen as the most important dimension of sustainability that underlies all sustainability goals. Through this, a system-level change can also be thought to require extensive cultural change, that is, a change in our values and lifestyles.
From values to norms
Values can be defined in many ways. In general, they refer to general goals, attitudes, and qualitative definitions of ethical awareness that direct human choices and actions. Values therefore reveal what is considered meaningful and worth pursuing. Values are considered subjective, but they are, in fact, not only individual: values are also influenced by society. The values of individuals may also conflict with each other, as can the values of individuals and the broader society.
Values work on both conscious and unconscious levels. All activities can be considered to be based on some values, regardless of whether the actors are aware of the values underlying their actions. In society, values occur in the form of various moral codes and norms – that is, as a wide variety of prohibitions, commandments, laws, and guidelines that guide action and choices.
Norms can be informal, such as a way to greet a neighbour in the name of good behavior, or formally accepted and recorded by society, such as traffic rules or legislation. Values that have crystallized into norms, such as laws, are no longer subjective but apply to everyone. Failure to comply with formal standards usually results in some form of punishment. On the other hand, norms are also agreements based on a certain historical time and available information, and as such they can be questioned – even if they have already become laws. The Extinction Rebellion movement, for instance, seeks to highlight the shortcomings of current environmental legislation by means of civil disobedience (that is, by peacefully breaking the law) and, in this manner, demands stronger climate action from society.
The values of individuals and the values of society form value systems and perceptions of reality based on different knowledge bases. Values also vary by culture. For example, different religions have strongly influenced the development of values within cultures – and certainly continue to do so.
Religions have also influenced the development of humans' relationship with nature. Most religions often involve some idea of humans as benevolent protectors of nature. On the other hand, some philosophers have thought that environmental destruction can be traced back to the Western Christian tradition of controlling nature. In Buddhism, for example, there has basically been no division between human and nature, in which case human well-being is seen as part of the well-being of nature. The same holds true with the thinking of many indigenous peoples.
Recently, however, representatives of several religious denominations have sought to look at their holy scriptures from an environmentally conscious perspective (see, for example, Thiele 2013). That said, even the benevolent teachings of religions do not necessarily translate directly into legislation, for example.
Today, in Western countries, the values of liberal humanism prevail, emphasizing the value of the human individual. However, perceptions of who are considered to be valuable individuals have varied historically. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was issued in 1948, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was concluded in 1989. In many ways, universal human rights are a fairly recent idea. In Europe, for example, Switzerland did not give women the right to vote until 1971, and back in 1995, a major UN Conference on Women's Rights was held in Beijing, whose agenda included the recognition of women's human rights.
The notion of morally valuable individuals is thus constantly expanding. The development of human rights is a good example of how values and norms change over time. We can, therefore, also influence how our culture takes shape and what – or who – is considered important and valuable within it.
From humanism to post-humanism
Many Western cultural values, such as freedom and equality, strongly rely on the humanist worldview. According to the ideal of liberal humanism, all individuals are born free and equal, and politics must guarantee the realization of equality and liberty in the life of the individual.
Freedom and equality are important values for human rights. However, liberal humanism has been criticized, among other things, for the fact that its ideal human being is a white man, thus excluding a large number of people. During the Enlightenment, liberal humanism did promise equality for all, but in practice this still has not materialized, and white men have the most cultural decision-making power. Indeed, liberal humanism has been criticized for failing to take into account the various dependencies and social positions in which individuals are actually born. In other words, despite its beautiful aspirations, liberal humanism forgets that not everyone has the same opportunities for “free” choices.
How, then, does this criticism relate to ecological problems? Liberal humanism has also been criticized for putting humans above nature and non-human animals. The role of animals and nature in society (i.e. whether their well-being matters) therefore depends on the values nestled in the culture.
In liberal humanism, the instrumentalization of animals – that is, the understanding of animals as commodities – has a long history, which is rooted in the thinking of the philosopher René Descartes (1596–1659), among others. Descartes' best-known saying is, "I think, therefore I am." In his philosophy, humans are placed above other beings precisely because of their ability to think rationally. Animals, instead, are equated with machines. It is easy to understand that if animals are seen as machine-like, they are given only an instrumental value.
Indeed, the growing adverse effects of humanity on nature and animals have led researchers to question the human-centered set of values of humanism. There has been talk of critical posthumanism, within which the relationship between humans and nature and other animals is sought to be redefined in such a way that humans are not considered more valuable than all other living things. Posthumanism thus refers to the idea of ethics that takes into account not only humans but also life outside of humanity. This kind of posthumanism should not be confused with transhumanism, which seeks to improve humans by all means possible and instead of caring for the well-being of non-human life.
While humanism still has something to offer, for example, in human rights debates, the excessively human focus of humanism’s set of values can, at worst, harm not only nature but also humans themselves, as human well-being depends on the wider well-being of nature.
Values are also conveyed through various cultural products and experiences. The most striking example of this are the works of art used in political propaganda in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, among others. The way in which, for example, people, nature or animals belonging to a certain group are represented in the media, art and literature, is therefore important, as representations can contribute to affirming or challenging certain values and sets of values. For example, Finland's nature is often presented as clean and untouched, which hides the country's environmental problems.
The importance of representations in shaping values and attitudes is therefore good to recognize. One special significance, that fiction is often considered to have, is that empathizing with the lives of imaginary characters can teach empathy towards other people. It has also been argued that with the help of fiction, or art more broadly, one can even try to grasp the experiences of other animals, imagine solutions to environmental crises, or deal with the uncomfortable feelings caused by these crises.
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with values. It examines, for instance, what is valuable and what kind of action is right and in line with the values. Environmental philosophy, on the other hand, is a field of research that looks at values in relation to nature and the environment. The birth of environmental philosophy dates back to the environmental revival of the 1960s and 1970s, which we covered earlier in the course. The environmental philosophical debate on values has focused on the reflection of the value of human and non-human beings, which highlights the juxtaposition of absolute values and instrumental values. This has also been accompanied by a debate on human-centeredness, or anthropocentrism, and on the other hand, nature-centeredness, or biocentrism. Other fields that have developed alongside environmental philosophy include animal philosophy, animal ethics, and critical animal studies, where special consideration given to the value and rights of non-human animals.
Values, knowledge, and action
Knowledge and values are interrelated: As knowledge increases, values may change. As we stated above, values are not static and immutable, but learned and internalized – and influenced by changes in society. For example, people's relationship with the rest of nature is significantly affected by available research data. Research on animal behavior has lead to the realization that many non-human species are aware, sentient, and capable of for example suffering.
The knowledge of animal behaviour has also affected animal rights. In 2013, India recognized dolphins as non-human individuals with rights comparable to human rights. In Argentina, a court ruled in 2015 that an orangutan who has lived in a zoo for 25 years has the rights of a non-human person, such as the right to liberty. Even more advanced than the personal rights granted to animals is the granting of personal rights to the Whanganui River, important to the Maori, in New Zealand. A different question is what the rights mean in practice and how they can be enforced. Because non-human individuals cannot represent themselves in human society, legitimate trustees have been proposed.
Neither knowledge nor values always lead to action. Indeed, environmental research in the social sciences and psychology has drawn attention to the contradiction between values and activities related to the environment. In many surveys, respondents report that their values are quite environmentally friendly, but the values do not manifest as environmentally friendly choices and behaviour.
Many different explanations have been offered for the phenomenon. An individual may have a variety of internal and external constraints for making environmentally friendly choices. A sustainable lifestyle may require knowledge and skills that are still lacking. In the rush of everyday life, a familiar, albeit more environmentally harmful, choice may seem easier than a behavioural model that is based on values and requires learning. More environmentally friendly consumer choices can also be more expensive than environmentally harmful choices, making them not possible for everyone. The place of residence can also affect the choices available to an individual, say, in the way they travel on a daily basis, among other things When environmental awareness and values conflict with one’s own actions, the result may be cognitive dissonance (i.e. a conflict between attitudes and knowledge) and crushing environmental anxiety.
The making of sustainable choices is thus significantly limited by the structures of societal systems. If sustainable choices are expensive or otherwise unattainable, or a person does not have sufficient power to make decisions in accordance with their values, it is not possible to act in line with the values. It is therefore important to target societal norms, such as legislation, and policy instruments, such as financial subsidies, in ways that make sustainable choices possible and attractive. Institutional actors like educational institutions or interest groups, and also companies, play a significant role in the realization of values.
One can think that values become visible when we consider which “systems” in society are seen as being valuable in themselves, and which have only instrumental value. In modern societies, for example, slavery is not considered acceptable, as it is seen that people cannot be used as means to an end (at least by force and without reasonable compensation). Thus, according to the tradition of humanism, people are considered valuable in themselves. Animals, on the other hand, are not generally considered to have a similar intrinsic value, so they can be used to produce food and other commodities. Similarly, nature is most often seen as having instrumental value: it provides people with food and meets all kinds of other needs. This is, of course, true. But seeing nature and ecosystems merely as means of satisfying human needs and desires leads to the exploitation of nature and ecosystems and decreases their well-being – and, in doing so, decrease also human well-being.
Food for thought: what could be the sustainability implications of giving non-human beings intrinsic rather than instrumental value? You can share your reflections and discuss with other course participants on the page linked below.
Would you like to comment something on this section? Voluntary.
Welcome to the follow-up course!
In the third course on planetary well-being, we will delve deeper into the themes discussed in this section, such as values and the cultural change that the well-being of humans and the planet as a whole requires. We will continue on the subject of how values become established as norms, and how they are eventually made into laws. In addition, we explore intricate moral philosophical questions and reflect more on why people sometimes act against their values. We also look at art, literature, and the media as shapers of values – not forgetting interesting examples – and the role of education in achieving planetary well-being. Welcome to the course of Good life and planetary well-being!