I took part recently in an activity designed to quantify my values. I was presented with a list of 20 items, and a hypothetical $100,000 to distribute among each cause however I would like. Each item applies personally to you unless otherwise noted. The list is as follows:
1. An en to hunger world wide
2. a happy mariage
3. a long life of physical health
4. Peace between the US and all other countries
5. The reversal of global warming
6. Fame
7. An end to capital punishment
8. A good education
9. The ability to choose the POTUS* for the rest of your life
10. An end to racism
11. Enough money so that you wouldn't have to work for the rest of your life
12. Outsanding musical/artistic talent
13. An end to abortion
14. Equal rights for women world-wide
15. Legalization of gay marriage
16. Outstanding athletic talen
17. Spiritual enlightenment
18. World-wide democracy
19. Nuclear disarmement
20. World-wide acceess to effecive contraception
*President of the United States
Needless to say, the phrasing matters. There are for example many reduncacies, depnding on your goals of course. Personally, I see no need for "Outstanding" athletic talent if I can live a long life of good health. That is one of those areas where I am fully content with just being good but not great. World wide access to contraception may null the need for an end to hunger, as it would do a great deal to alleviate hunger in the first place, with less children being born. Then again, an end to world hunger might entail better contraception in the first place, it could be argued as more direct.
There is also some ambiguity. Equal rights for women world-wide. Does that mean that all women are equal to all other women, or that they are all equal to men? or Fame. Does that mean celebrity Paris Hilton type fame, or recognition for one's accomplishments? Or Peace between the US and all other countries. Does this mean that the US has no more quarrells, but other countries can fight amongst themselves? Or simply, world peace? The US-centric approach to the statement puts to question the benefit of the result, as it potentially only benefits Americans.
Some things are worded rather definitevely. An end to abortion implies not that abortions would be illegal necessarily, but just that nobody would have them anymore. For the sake of determining one's value, this is actually better, as here there is less ambiguity about how many people would still be having abortions, illegal or not.
It's a very interesting excercise, and I reccomend you try it. The wording of each item makes a huge impact on the reasoning taken to justify whatever amount of money alloted to each cause. An interesting experiment to conduct would be to reword each item in a different list, and see if people respond any differently to the second one. I hypothesize that they would.
I think that it is very interesting that the way of determining your values was through the use of money. That only strengthens the concept of a materialistic United States. Also with many global or social issues such as an end to world hunger or an end to racism, I think that there would be immense social pressure to support these issues or allocate more money than you normally would. I think that this also shows that with these complicated social Americans are so willing to throw money at a problem, but less likely to actually to any ground work to solve it.
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