Are you a defender or an advancer of your MIVs?

People are a complex co-mingling of ingredients. Everyone is made up of varying quantities of creativity, assertiveness, sensitivity, athleticism, passion, patience, physical beauty, sociability, intelligence, and many other attributes. We are a smorgasbord of characteristics that makes everyone of us a unique concoction that is either delicious, repulsive, or somewhere in between depending on whom the taster is. We are all ordinary when it comes right down to it. There are combinations of certain attributes that result in a perfect storm of cult of personality – e.g. Gandhi and Hitler – but those attributes that lead to greatness is a blinders view into what makes a whole human-being. Believe it or not, there were people who despised and loved both men.

People are defined as extraordinary based on the social value system in which they live. Hitler is despised because he killed six million Jews and most of us believe that to be an evil act. Gandhi is widely revered for successfully leading a peaceful rebellion and most view the defeat of Great Britain as a highly moral victory.

So what are those social values based upon that result in general denunciation and support for those two men? Those social values are nothing more than an agreement among many individual value systems; yours and mine.

The level of visceral response invoked by what we value decides the level of support or abhorrence towards people. The killing of six million Jews is abhorred by 99%+ of the people (my estimate) while the values espoused by Democrats and Republicans, respectively, are not so universal. Clearly we feel more strongly towards someone killing millions of innocent people as opposed to someone’s stance on national healthcare.

Our individual relationships are a microcosm of the social acceptance and denunciation of Gandhi and Hitler. The attributes we value most and least determine who we admire, resent, dislike, envy, etc. and the fervency/vehemence with which we feel that way. As it turns out, the phrase "it's all about me" is spot on.

It’s human nature to judge the quality of others based on their success or failure with adhering to the principles we hold most dear. Their level of success is compared directly to our own success. Our individually weighted most important values (MIVs) invoke a visceral response that causes us to rank those around us. Because emotion is the driving force, the lesser important values are not important. The middle values are the ones we are willing to compromise to get what we want. Yes people, you do compromise some of your principles because some just don't matter enough to fight over.

The most interesting part is the internal weighting of our MIVs and our need to defend or advance specific MIVs. Two people can be driven to the same goal, let’s say advancing the arts through donating to the National Endowment of the Arts. However, one persons drive may be sourced through inspiration and desire to spread art to everyone as a gift while the other is driven by anger that government is letting art wither on the vine. The act alone of supporting an organization cannot tell us whether someone is defending or advancing a MIV. In my opinion, because we are comfortable with black and white answers and ambiguity is painful, people select the extroverted technique that they are most comfortable with - defense or advancement.

That takes us to our daily interactions. We meet people throughout our lives that are important to us because we either love them or hate them. Love and hate are what make people important. Absence will result in forgetting those that don’t invoke those feelings – it’s not the same for those we love or hate. We remember those people forever. We love people because they share one or more MIV. We hate people because we cannot tolerate the violation of MIV that mean so much to us. I’m sure you have met people that can actually fit in both categories simultaneously.

So the next time you say to yourself “that person bugs me” look at which MIV(s) of yours they are violating. Same holds true for love. And, those that don’t invoke strong feelings at all? Well those people’s convictions are probably too hidden or ambiguous to care about. It seems to me that all of us invoke love, hatred, and/or invisibility but most of the time it is purely by accident. Isn't that going through life somewhat blindly?

I'm interested in your thoughts and whether you consider yourself predominantly an advancer or defender of your MIVs?