On Western values

Many years ago, I packed up my entire life in a few bags and moved to Vancouver. One of the reasons I picked the city was the values the average resident lives by. This is about those values, and why they are worth preserving.

This is not a post about politics, religion or geography. It is about humanity and liberty.

Tom Holland’s Dominion makes an argument that stuck with me: what the West treats as common sense is anything but common. Every human life has the same worth. The weak deserve protection from the strong. Nobody, however powerful, is beyond question. For most of history, the West included, none of this was obvious. Might made right, and nobody lost sleep over it.

Holland has his own account of where these ideas came from. I care more about the conclusion: they are an inheritance, not the default setting of humanity. We are fish, and this is the water.

Values are words that mean different things to different people (hence principles on my about page), so to be specific:

  1. Every human life has the same worth. Whatever the talent, title or outcome. It is why I can assume good intent from a stranger.
  2. Your life is yours to design. What you think, say, build and believe is your call. It is why radical candor is safe.
  3. Nobody is above the rules. No ivory towers, at the scale of a country.
  4. Anything can be questioned. Always ask why is not rude here. Science and startups both run on it.
  5. Freedom comes with ownership. If your life is yours, so are the outcomes. Extreme ownership is the bill for liberty.

My principles sit on top of these five. Take them away and the principles stop making sense.

You do not get something neutral in their place either. You get the default: your worth is your rank, your tribe or your usefulness. The rules are whatever the strongest person in the room says they are. Asking why is disloyalty. It does not need a villain or a flag. Every group of humans drifts back to it when nobody is doing the work, be it a country, a company or a team.

In Vancouver, you do not find them in a document. You find them on a Tuesday. People thank the bus driver on the way out. We say sorry when someone else steps on our foot. A dozen languages share one seawall, and nobody asks where you are from or what you believe before holding the door. Liberty looks boring when it works.

That is also why it is easy to lose. You stop noticing what you were handed.

They are called Western b/c of where they took root. Anyone can hold them, and anyone can drop them. Preserving them has little to do with flags or who you vote for. It is a practice, and you do the reps: assume good intent, say the hard thing kindly, ask why, own the outcome.

And thank the bus driver.