Values guide individuals and organize societies.

Yet, individuals can hold values other than those held by society.

In everyday situations, values are transformed into expectations and behaviors.

It’s the expectation that other people behave according to one’s values, whereas the behavior showcases the value.

When a society holds values, they have been transformed into different variants of norms people will assume to be shared. It is how society makes behavior predictable and thus eases knowing how people will behave.

There are many ways to encode values, you’ll find rituals, rules of politeness, principles, rules, laws, regulations, policies, protocols, contracts and agreements, meeting agendas, etc.

They all help to make people compatible with one another. It is a mix of knowing how to deal with differences and establishing similarities.

Whatever isn’t covered by society’s values, is still covered by values. This time people’s personal values built into the willingness to engage with one another and the experience of how to do so. This, however, often is a space of misunderstanding and differing expectations. It’s a space of uncertainty that isn’t covered by shared norms, but that’s where individual experience and willingness allow us to discover ways to engage with one another.

After a while, outsiders will be able to tell the rules that have been established in such a newfound group. This includes the areas of incompatibility which often will have been somehow excluded by the group. Sometimes it is topics one does not discuss; in other situations, they are the communication channels that prevent the “wrong” people from speaking to another or give “control” over the communication to a selected few. They are the “flaws” in the system, that is, should one assume that an ideal system exists. In practice, they are the solutions people chose in the hope of reducing problems and frictions in a group and given their knowledge of the situation.