See What We Do, See Our Values

Sun Herald

Sunday December 11, 2005

HUGH MACKAY Email your ethical dilemma to moralmaze@fairfax.com.au.

IN among all the pious talk about values - Australian values, personal values, spiritual values - it might be worth reminding ourselves that there's really only one way to work out what your values are: look at how you behave. "We are," in Aristotle's famous phrase, "what we repeatedly do."

When we say that we want to lead more balanced lives, for instance, how seriously should that claim be treated? If our lives continue to career out of control, dominated by work or any of the other addictions that may throw it off balance, it's actually pointless to say we believe in balanced lives. What's the significance of the statement if it's not borne out by the evidence?

"Family values" is another current favourite. The Federal Government was so enthusiastic about family values that, in the heat of its ardent post-election wooing of Family First senator Stephen Fielding, it undertook to provide family impact statements for all its proposed legislation. Senator Fielding says we're still waiting: even the controversial industrial relations legislation was not accompanied by a family impact statement.

That gap between rhetoric and behaviour is a reflection of the gap many of us struggle to close in our own lives. We say we believe in the need to be committed to the care of our children; we say we should spend less time at work - or at golf - and more with the people we say are important to us; we decry the influence of the media on the moral formation of our children.

And then what do we do? We break up our families in record numbers (almost 25 per cent of Australian families are single-parent families). We pay others to care for our children. We work longer hours and spend more time away from home. We sigh with exhausted relief when the children become engrossed in TV programs, computer games or the internet.

None of this is necessarily bad, or necessarily harmful to children, but it does raise an interesting question about our alleged values: why do we so often say one thing and do another? Is it a matter of having good intentions that are too hard to put into practice, or is this just another example of how we lie to ourselves? Or do we think the recital of "values" will create a good impression, like a form of self-promotion?

Perhaps it's time to take a reality check: mightn't it be healthier to be a bit more honest with ourselves and each other about what our values really are? If we are what we repeatedly do, then we need to examine what we repeatedly do. If we're not proud of it - if it really does contradict values we wish to espouse - then being frank in our self-assessment is a good starting point for making some changes.

"Money can't buy happiness." Now there's another popular plank of our values platform. We repeat it endlessly, and what do we do? With Christmas upon us, we'll probably demonstrate all over again the yawning chasm between our stated and our actual values. We'll buy too much stuff - again - and then wonder how we got caught up in the mad rush of materialism - again.

There's an established Western tradition of equating personal worth with material possessions, so if we stand squarely in that tradition, why not admit it? I have great respect for the woman in one of my recent research projects who declared with disarming frankness: "People who say money can't buy happiness don't know where to shop."

You mightn't share her values, but at least you know where you stand with her.