Look at where Romania is placed! In the quadrant of traditional and survival values, closer to India than to Germany and closer to Peru than to the Netherlands. They say a picture is worth 1.000 words. Well, this picture is worth 10.000 words for me. Let’s understand the graph. Horizontally, we see the degree in which survival versus self-expression values are praised by nations and vertically, we have traditional versus secular-rational values. How do we interpret these?
Survival values are those who make us anxious about losing what we have.
versus
Self-expression values make us dream of a brighter future and give us the energy and courage to pursue our plans and embrace the new.
Traditional values are those making us obey the rules and praise our group over others, while having a high dose of nationalistic pride.
versus
Secular-rational values like logic, empathy, reason, altruism, or moral intuition are shaping us in being good to other people just because they are human beings and not because we are told so or because they are part of our group.
The model links these values to the economic development of the nations. And the traits that we see for Romanians are more counter-productive when aiming to build a prosperous society. In order to get there, we need to embrace more of the secular-rational values in order to be able to team-up easier with other individuals and build stronger communities driven by greater than-self objectives. Also, in order to thrive, we need to shift from being counter-productive due to our focus on survival values to embracing more of the self-expression values that bring along the courage and determination to pursue our own aspirations.
