Dr Scott Atran on economic incentives and sacred values:
> Much more is know about economic decision making than moral decision making. Very little is known about sacred values. [In political negotiations] the standard view is to leave the hard questions of recognition and who you are for last, and you try to build things slowly through economic small steps, and person-to-person discussions. [I find that] when sacred values are in conflict, that is a formula for another hundred years of war.
> Now what do I mean by sacred values? Well, they are values that are very strongly tied to the emotions, to your sense of who you are within your community, and you are usually not even aware of them. It is a little bit like food: people usually are not aware of food until they are starving, [but then it becomes the one value people have]
> The same [is true for] sacred values: sacred values are the frame within which all social and economic transactions are possible, and again you usually are not even aware of them, until another society or group challenges them. Then they become dominant.
> In our [secular Western] society we do not have standard principles of sacred values any more, except for our children and perhaps our nation, everything is supposedly fungible. Of course, if I asked you if you would accept a million dollars to sell off your child, you would say I am crazy. If I insisted on it you would think I am a sociopath. But that is exactly the way people feel when one offers them a material incentive to exchange their sacred values.
> Much more is know about economic decision making than moral decision making. Very little is known about sacred values. [In political negotiations] the standard view is to leave the hard questions of recognition and who you are for last, and you try to build things slowly through economic small steps, and person-to-person discussions. [I find that] when sacred values are in conflict, that is a formula for another hundred years of war.
> Now what do I mean by sacred values? Well, they are values that are very strongly tied to the emotions, to your sense of who you are within your community, and you are usually not even aware of them. It is a little bit like food: people usually are not aware of food until they are starving, [but then it becomes the one value people have]
> The same [is true for] sacred values: sacred values are the frame within which all social and economic transactions are possible, and again you usually are not even aware of them, until another society or group challenges them. Then they become dominant.
> In our [secular Western] society we do not have standard principles of sacred values any more, except for our children and perhaps our nation, everything is supposedly fungible. Of course, if I asked you if you would accept a million dollars to sell off your child, you would say I am crazy. If I insisted on it you would think I am a sociopath. But that is exactly the way people feel when one offers them a material incentive to exchange their sacred values.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ijmBd69878&t=6m3s