National Public Radio (NPR) commentator Dick Meyer reported on the work of sociologist Wayne Baker in his recent piece titled ‘September 11th and The Non-Crisis of Values’ as part of the series ‘Against the Grain.’
Meyer writes:
Baker is a sociologist at the University of Michigan and the author of America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception(2005). I won’t bury the lead for you: The answer is perception, not crisis. It’s a useful big-picture view of American values at a time when it’s easy to be lost in the worm’s-eye view.
Baker is a wise social thinker who studies our values from the perspective of public opinion research, specifically data garnered from large polls conducted regularly all over the world called the World Values Surveys. He rightly notes that the idea that America faces a crisis of values, or “moral values,” is pervasive and is essentially assumed to be true.
But what exactly would a “crisis” of values entail? Would it be that Americans lost their traditional values? Or American values eroding in comparison with other countries? Are Americans deeply divided on fundamental beliefs? He answers no to each question; he found no crisis in America.
From a broad, global perspective, Baker examines human values on two planes. The first is a range of values from traditional to secular-rationalist. Societies with traditional values emphasize the importance of God and religion; of family and parenting; of national identity and pride; of absolute standards of morality, not relative ones. Secular-rationalist values are pretty much the opposite: nonreligious; open to abortion and euthanasia; skeptical of national pride or patriotism; tilted toward individualism over family, duty and authority.
The second axis of value runs from survival values to self-expression ones. In less developed and stable societies, survival values reign: Physical security and meeting basic material needs are paramount; cultural change, foreigners and ethnic diversity are seen as threatening; intolerance is exaggerated and authoritarian regimes tend to flourish. When material needs are well met, self-expression, self-realization, environmentalism, gender equality and creativity become more important.
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