Most people have been conditioned to believe that values are purely humanly-contrived ideas, a kind of furniture for the mind. When Abraham Maslow announced that he had discovered MetaValues operating as active agents influencing the behavior of every self-actualizing person he studied, his colleagues were shocked. Maslow wrote, “[MetaValues] are perceived, not invented … They exist beyond the life of the individual. They can be conceived to be a kind of perfection. They could conceivably satisfy the human longing for certainty.”
Maslow’s ideas about values are probably very far from what you may have read or heard. The common claim is, “My values are mine and yours are yours.” This can be accurate enough when applied to our tastes for things such as clothing, music, and food, but it is not valid at all when applied to the cardinal issues of Truth and Integrity. You may have come to believe that values are merely admonitions designed by society to keep you in line—various do’s and don’ts that operate as reins to hold you back and channel your behavior. Dr. Maslow acknowledged the nature of these society-contrived values, and he determined that they tend to be imposed from the outside. However, as we mature into Self-Actualizers, we begin to resist these intrusive, coerced values. MetaValues then awaken from somewhere inside and begin to stir into action. Unlike the values of childhood that sometimes served as reins to retard and control us, MetaValues are more like a team of powerful horses that pull us along toward uncharted possibilities.