Brightloop-MAHA: What is a Protocol?
In general, a protocol is a framework that governs how a person acts, judges, decides, or even refuses something in a given context.
By Origin
Protocols can be distinguished as follows:
- Human-made protocols — formulated by individuals or agreed upon socially. These include written law, traffic rules, business transaction ethics, and the like.
Transcendent protocols — claimed to originate from beyond human construction, such as religious rules. A defining trait of transcendent protocols is the claim that something is more important than worldly life — whether that be an afterlife, reward, or a purpose beyond worldly existence.
However, this claim does not necessarily mean transcendent protocols regard worldly life as unimportant altogether. On the contrary, worldly life is generally still positioned as a medium or means toward that more important end — not something to be neglected or considered worthless. In other words, transcendent protocols place worldly life lower in a hierarchy of value relative to their ultimate purpose, without erasing the value and importance of worldly life itself.
By Function
Protocols can also be distinguished as follows:
- Partial protocols — govern a portion of life's concerns, not the whole. These include production protocols, firefighting protocols, medical protocols, security protocols, search-and-rescue protocols, and the like. Partial protocols are always human-made — whether the product of individual thought or collective consensus.
- Fundamental protocols — govern how a person lives their entire life: how they attain happiness, what they should believe, how they avoid sorrow, and how they respond to reality in general.
Classification Matrix
These two axes are independent — origin (human-made/transcendent) does not determine scope (partial/fundamental). They can be cross-tabulated as follows:
| Partial | Fundamental | |
|---|---|---|
| Human-made | traffic law, business ethics | secular/agnostic philosophy of life |
| Transcendent | dietary rules (halal/haram, kosher), rules on beverages, guidance for facing despair | religious systems that govern the whole of life |
Secular and agnostic systems still fall under fundamental protocols — even though their origin is human-made — because both also possess their own mechanisms for guiding how a person lives their entire life.
From Protocol to Values
Fundamental protocols work by instructing certain behaviors, attitudes, and preferences — such as honesty, contempt for liars, or a bias toward goodness. These instructions, through a process of individual internalization, become values — discussed further in the next section.
What is a Value?
In general, a value is an evaluative unit held by an individual — a single belief, so to speak, about what is good/bad, right/wrong, worth or not worth pursuing. A value is not a standalone entity arising at random; it is the result of internalizing instructions contained within the fundamental protocol a person holds.
If protocol is the architecture — the larger framework that instructs — then value is the unit absorbed from that architecture at the individual level. A fundamental protocol instructs "be honest," and what forms within the individual after processing that instruction is the value "honesty matters."
The Process of Value Formation
Values do not form automatically or uniformly, even among two people who hold the same fundamental protocol. Their formation occurs through information processing — a node that absorbs protocol instructions and then processes them based on the individual's experience, capacity for reasoning, and life context. As a result:
- Two people with identical fundamental protocols may hold values of differing intensity or priority.
- Values can change over time, even while the fundamental protocol held remains the same — because information processing continues throughout life.
The Nature of Values
- Derived — values do not emerge from a vacuum; their origin can always be traced back to a specific protocol instruction (whether fundamental or partial). This also holds for values that appear to arise from trauma or personal experience: the trauma itself is not the source of the value — rather, it is the primary protocol a person uses to face that trauma that determines which value ultimately forms. Two people with the same traumatic experience may end up with different values, depending on which protocol guides how they interpret and respond to it.
- Personal yet not fully independent — a value belongs to the individual, but its roots remain within the larger protocol system.
- Layered — some values are held more firmly (core values) than others (peripheral values), depending on how deeply the instruction has been internalized.
Examples
| Protocol Instruction | Value Formed |
|---|---|
| "Be honest" | Honesty matters |
| "Despise liars" | Dishonesty is contemptible |
| "Do good" | Goodness is worth pursuing |
| "Do not harm others" | Empathy is valuable |
These values eventually become the basis on which a person makes decisions and acts day to day — bridging abstract protocol with concrete behavior. How these values then interact, conflict, or form a feedback loop back to protocol will be discussed in the next section.
Note: This piece is reflective in nature.