Reclaiming Values: For the 21st Century

Reclaiming Values is a revision of my 2017 book, Values for the 21st Century. Since then, a number of developments and incidents have made the topic even more relevant. This turn of events has prompted me to revise or update the original arguments and incorporate recent developments. The resurgence of populism, driven by social media, has been a dominant force. Right-wing preachers and politicians have used simplistic arguments to capitalize on people's fears and prejudices. In some cases, the strategy entailed pandering to citizens' lowest instincts, stoking xenophobia, sexism and racism.

While the media focused on the excesses of former US president Trump, the worst case probably occurred in the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte openly encouraged people to take the law into their own hands, giving residents license to kill drug dealers and users. Some of these new authoritarians have used their popularity to amass near-dictatorial powers, including Erdogan in Turkey and Putin in Russia. Unfortunately, the divide-and-conquer approach has been quite successful politically. As a result, "liberal" values experienced severe setbacks in the 2010s.

Apparently, so did common sense. In 2020, Joe Biden campaigned for "the soul of America" in the US, a battle apparently not won, as the January 6 attack on the Capitol building proved. Short of a common set of values, citizens divided along partisan lines no longer agree on facts. A significant minority continues to believe that the election has been "stolen." In Europe, refugee and Brexit debates fueled heated discussions on the merits (or lack thereof) of free passage vs. protectionist restrictions. In India, multi-culturalism has suffered setbacks due to the resurgence of Hindu nationalism. China has reaffirmed totalitarian Maoism under Xi Ping, who declared himself leader for life, abandoning the party principle of collective leadership. Afghanistan's women are once again excluded from public life under the Taliban. Finally, Russia has regressed to the dark days of imperialism with the attack on the Ukraine in 2022.

The need for common ground is more acute than ever. We must reclaim values we can all subscribe to in order to meet today's global challenges more effectively. This book tackles the problem in four parts:Defining the topicObstaclesPromoting factorsRole models and examples