Sunday, February 8, 2004

What is value?

Thoughts about value and its meaning has been on my mind for some time. Are values concepts that have proven to be useful of a social unit (such as, the individual, family, society, or an organization)? I think values are learnt, that they are shaped by the environment and the unit of consciousness. Values don't seem to be inherent, something that grew naturally within the unit. Could values be a manisfestations or projections of patterns of self-consitency, inner tendencies that shape that unit's personalities? Are values like imprints coming from an implicate order?

There are universal values such as love, manifesting in other values such as the value of relatioship, friendship, brotherhood, security, connectivity, etc.) Some other values I find myself constantly thinking about have been: growth, evolution, change, duality, opposition, balance, knowledge, journeying, creativity and destruction.

I found from "Three Faces of Mind" (de Beauport & de Melesecca) these interesting references about values:

"Values are the collective wisdom of previous cultures passed on from generation to generation.

"Values indicate the action that was lived and valued in previous generations, valued because at some time in history it meant survival for the community.

"Values are patterns of action originating in the past and repeated again and again throughout history.

"Values are transmitted to us usually through a particular person that we loved and admired.

"Often we can recall the person and the event through which this value imprinted itself on our minds.

"Values come to us through our families, religion, school, or country, profession, heroes.

"The point is that values do not originate in the present."

Discuss

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