Environmental Impacts and Human Values Values are used by humans to make choices

Environmental Impacts and Human Values

Human Values

• Values are used by humans to make choices

• Making choices in congruence to one’s values provides meaning, comfort, and a sense of well being

• Making choices outside of one’s values results in feelings of guilt

Individual Values (after Maslow)

• Hierarchy that are related to:

• Physiological needs (food, warmth, etc.)
• Safety
• Human relations related to belonging and love
• Self-esteem
• Self-actualization

Religious Values

• Designate meaning

• Provide morality

• Defines relative importance of relationships

• God-human
• Human-human
• Human-environment

• Provide social control and expectations

Social and Community Values

• Provide for health and safety

• Protect freedoms

• Define responsibilities

• Allows for political involvement

• Provide social safety net for young and old, disadvantaged, and disenfranchised

Factors that Control Worldviews

Four Boxes

• 1- Hierarchists: value control, organizations, standardization, top-down

• 2- Egalitarians: value consensus, democracy, equality, community choice

• 3- Individualists: value individual freedom, personal choice

• 4- Fatalists: value freedom, strength to resist, individual power

Relation of Worldview to Environmental Impacts

Theory of Society Stages

• Four stages:

• Survival
• Pre-modern
• Modern
• Post-modern

Survival

• Focus on:

• hard work
• practical knowledge
• money
• possessions
• avoid mistakes

Pre-modern (hierarchical)

• Focus on:

• work
• skills/ trades
• stability
• family values
• religious values
• national values

Modern

• Focus on:

• Achievement
• Professional education
• Investments
• Political involvement
• Corporate or bureaucratic values

Post-modern (individual)

• Focus on:

• Individual freedom
• Individual education
• Financial achievement
• Good health
• Travel
• Consumption
• Self-actualization

Post-modern (egalitarian)

• Focus on:

• Community freedom
• Arts
• Human relationships
• Economic well being and health for all
• Equality
• Actualization of society

Developmental Progression

• Survival (fatalist)

• Pre-modern (hierarchist)
• Modern (hierarchist)
• Post-modern
• individualist egalitarian