Basic summary about Schwartz's Cultural Values ideas

Originally in its own repo and outputs here https://github.com/life-itself/cultural-values

• Individual values (10 of them)
  • Circle diagram
• Cultural values (7 of them)
  • Section with list of the 7 values
  • Picture of the circle with values in simple and detailed form (put images in /img/)
• Picture of countries plotted against values
• Definition of what the values are (simple quote from his definition)
• List of key papers (with a cached copy in archive/)

Expanded vision 2025-10-27 (strictly this should become a new issue and this a sub-issue of that)

Here’s a cleaned transcript followed by a distilled project outline.

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🧾 Tidy Transcript

So the broader vision around cultural values, I would say now, is cultural evolution. This means we could expand the project—rather than just being a summary of Schwartz’s cultural values, the idea is to create a knowledgebase and primer about cultural evolution.

One of the core questions in cultural evolution is what evolves? And one of the things that evolves at the heart of culture are values.

Schwartz’s framework is one major cross-cultural analysis of values. There are maybe two or three such frameworks overall—the other major one being Inglehart and colleagues’ World Values Survey.

So the project would start by outlining Schwartz’s theory of cultural values—what they are, how they’re structured, and how they vary across cultures. Then we’d move on to the World Values Survey, and finally to cultural evolution more broadly, and the idea of cultural paradigms.

The technical setup for the knowledge base would use Markdown and GitHub—what I sometimes call the MoGuF stack (Markdown, Obsidian, GitHub, FlowerShow). Essentially it’s just Markdown and GitHub for versioning and publishing, possibly with Obsidian as the local editing tool.

We’d also create a bibliography or reading list, either in Zotero or directly as Markdown files.

It would be like building a digital garden—a living, interconnected notebook of concepts, authors, and frameworks.

And as we go, we could take notes on how to build knowledge bases like this—that could become a handbook or mini-guide for creating digital knowledge bases, as a small side project.

The main focus, though, would be starting out by writing up Schwartz’s cultural value theory—his typology, dimensions, and value maps—and then connecting that to the larger frame of cultural evolution, where values are seen as the evolving units within cultural systems.

To use an analogy:
In biological evolution, genes are what evolve; they’re the core building blocks that change.
In cultural evolution, it’s less clearly defined—but we can think of values as one of the core evolving elements. Different cultures, like different organisms, embody different value constellations.

That’s what Schwartz is doing: trying to identify and measure these value patterns and see how they vary across countries and cultural systems.

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🌍 Project Outline: Cultural Evolution Knowledge Base

1. Vision and Aim

To create a digital, open, evolving knowledge base on cultural evolution—focusing on how values evolve, vary across societies, and shape civilizations.
It serves both as a primer and a reference point for ongoing research into cultural paradigms.

2. Core Components

Component	Description
Main Knowledge Base	Markdown-based repository organized via Obsidian + GitHub + FlowerShow for online publishing.
Content Areas	1️⃣ Schwartz’s Cultural Values Theory 2️⃣ World Values Survey (Inglehart et al.) 3️⃣ Broader Cultural Evolution theories and paradigms (Boyd & Richerson, Mesoudi, Turchin, etc.)
Bibliography / Reading List	Curated in Zotero or Markdown, including academic papers, data sources, and book references.
Glossary / Concepts	Key terms such as values, memes, cultural selection, value change, paradigm shifts, etc.
Visualizations	Reproductions or adaptations of Schwartz’s value circle, comparative maps, and cross-cultural plots.

3. Subproject A — Schwartz’s Cultural Value Survey

• Goal: Create a clear, accessible write-up of Shalom Schwartz’s theory of basic human values.

• Content Includes:

  • Overview of his model (10 basic values, motivational continuum, circular structure).
  • Methodology of value surveys and how they cluster across nations.
  • Visual representation of value maps (e.g., openness vs. conservation, self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement).
  • Comparison with World Values Survey dimensions.
  • Reflections on implications for cultural evolution.

4. Subproject B — How to Build a Knowledge Base (Handbook)

• Goal: Document the process and methods used to build the knowledge base itself.

• Content Includes:

  • Introduction to Markdown-based knowledge bases.
  • Overview of tools (Obsidian, GitHub, FlowerShow).
  • File and folder structure examples.
  • Best practices for linking, tagging, and versioning.
  • Tips for collaborative contribution and publishing workflows.
  • Template repository for others to fork and use.

5. Workflow

1. Set up GitHub repo + basic folder structure (/concepts, /authors, /frameworks, /bibliography, /visuals).
2. Begin with Schwartz’s material (one page per concept).
3. Expand to World Values Survey.
4. Develop general theory pages on cultural evolution.
5. Parallel documentation of workflow → becomes Knowledge Base Handbook.

6. Outputs

• Online site: e.g. culturalevolution.org or culturalevolution.lifeitself.org.
• Markdown repo: Open-source, living knowledge base.
• Handbook: “Building Knowledge Bases with Markdown and GitHub” (short guide or course).
• Data visualizations: Interactive FlowerShow visualizations of cultural value data.

Review the linked cultural-values repository and the checklist in this issue, including the planned /img/ and archive/ locations. First confirm which Schwartz cultural-values items are in scope rather than the later cultural-evolution expansion. Done should mean the selected sections, images, country plot, definition, and paper list are added and linked consistently.