How to Navigate Competing Values

or: how to develop an internal evolutionary stable strategy

Hello and welcome to rewilding philosophy - your letters for ^ekophilosophical health in a collapsing world.

When we think of evolution, we think of a straight line. One species develops various traits, the traits that are most suitable for survival and reproduction win, the rest lose. However, evolution is obviously more complex.

Imagine you have 100 monkeys and all of them want to be the alpha - soon, they’d all kill each other. Instead, some monkeys want to be alpha monkeys, some prefer to stay in the background and some prefer to serve. That way, you get a more or less stable monkey colony. In biology, this is known as evolutionary stable strategies. It’s through the diversity of traits that makes them successful as a species.

The same applies to humans. If all of us were one way, our societies as we know them wouldn’t exist. Imagine all of us wanting to be bakers. We’d have plenty of croissants, but no one to care for us when we’re sick. If all of us were extraverted, we’d just talk over each other. If all of us were introverted, marketing likely wouldn’t exist (not too bad).

“If humanity makes it to the next level in the evolutionary game, it will be through recognition of our interdependency with each other and the organisms of our biosphere.” Nora Bateson

In fact, the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis found that evolutionary novelty arises from symbiosis or mutual collaboration between differing life-forms - that evolution is the emergence of individuality from the interblending of once independent organisms.

So while this diversity is necessary to create dynamic and innovative societies, it is also the reason for constant anxiety.

Diversity means we are different. And what’s different - if unchecked - scares us and in turn makes us angry and annoyed. While this doesn’t feel good, it is good. It means the system is working. Sameness eventually kills any ecosystem. And society. Diversity fosters it.

Now coming to navigating your values.

It’s likely that you experience inner struggles of values. You want ice cream, but you also want to be healthy. You aim for sustainable living, yet you wish to fly to Bali. You may want to help a homeless person, but also believe in individual agency and responsibility.

The internal differences - just like the differences in ecosystems and societies - create discomfort.

They are also a sign of health though.

Some say that enlightenment happens when these voices are aligned. The opposite is true.

When these different voices and values are entirely aligned, it’s more likely that we developed fundamentalist ideas - we doubled down on our conviction of one voice, just to escape the discomfort that comes with the many voices and values.

“Without yin’s consideration of the whole, yang’s viewpoints can become fundamentalist and exclusionary. We see this in our culture that blindly follows yang, building outwards and upwards without any sense of the relational whole, inconsiderate of the needs of our communities, human and otherwise.” Toko-pa Turner

So how then do you deal with them?

You recognize that each value and voice involves a tradeoff. If you want to be healthy, you might forgo ice cream. If sustainability is your goal, you may choose the train. By helping a homeless person, you might inadvertently reinforce their situation, yet not helping means ignoring someone in need.

You don’t want to aim to eliminate your competing values, you want to learn to coexist with them. You become comfortable with the anxiety and discomfort that this creates, instead of trying to get rid of it. You develop an internal evolutionary stable strategy.

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Feeling like you learned something? Or maybe mildly entertained? Share this newsletter with a friend who’s also grappling with wether to eat ice cream a week into their resolutions. After all, we are all better with a little company. Stay curious, stay diverse!