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Lakoff was correct about elites needing to update their understanding of how our minds work and how the general population views things. My own view is that the goal is not to abandon the values but to become more effective exponents of sustainable democratic value creation. This is hard to keep in mind when the crown is baying for action according to "that old time religion", but is non-the-less imperative.
It is far preferable to accept, while heritage values can be vulnerable to criticism on grounds of cultural relativism and cultural domination, that it is still possible to create universal values, even though the process may be an ongoing one. The alternative is to accept a long "war of cultures" which the Chinese may well win through sheer weight. Does weight = rationality? "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Does weight = rationality?
weight of agreement creates consensus rationality.
perfect rationality may be a distant goal, (in your terms: universal values), that even recedes as one approaches, but the journey there, slaloming through the various '-isms' and '-ologies', knocking down a few!
as clever people with hidden agendas side-track us continually, it has been 2 steps forward, 1 back since time began towards some holy grail of simply being able to live side by side with ones' neighbours and mutually profit from the proximity, but i do sense a magnetic pull, created by the wishes and prayers of millions of 'little people' with common sense, whose names will never be famous, towards this shimmering mirage.
those 'clever people', unfortunately, have often squirrelled themselves into powerful positions as our 'leaders'.
so we have to work around that somehow, and i have faith that we can and are... 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
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