Objectives:

• Become familiar with the basic relationship of human values to psychological and philosophical endeavors
• Understand that values are formed from external and internal drives of an individual
• Explore one’s own value system

My Post regarding to the reading:

In this week’s reading, the author pointed out the question of “Confronted with the unpredictability, complexity and quarrelsomeness of human values, with the apparent lack of any real agreement or uniformity in our personal evaluations and beliefs, the evaluations and beliefs that guide our everyday speech and conduct, how should we respond?” (page 5). The author then constructed a framework to define and compare personal values and I find it very interesting that the author mentioned that we are controlled by the influence of genes on our underlying personality or peer pressure. I agree with the point that our values are being influenced by peer pressure and I have personal experiences with this point.

I think that most people are reactive about other people’s values, although they may or may agree with specific points. When I was in high school, a lot of my peers started to have romantic relationships with a girl/boy from our grade. At that time, I don’t really value romantic life as an important part of my life and in fact, I don’t think it is part of my everyday value. However, I am influenced by how my peers value the presence of a boyfriend/girlfriend and quickly confessed to a female friend of mine. I feel that when I was trying to value romantic feelings, I was more of reacting to peer pressure and trying to go with the flow in terms of determining what values to consider. I think the problem of peer pressure is very significant in people’s life, no matter when we were kids or we become adults with a bunch of responsibilities. I do consider peer pressure something negative in our life because we could easily get lost when facing peer pressure. I consider values as something that requires a lot of rational thinking and not something that should be determined by who other peoples are.

My Top Values Statement:

I think the belief pattern I carried from my family the most is the valuing of social life. My father values friendships a lot and he always says that three friends make a great team. I think the social nature of my family makes me value my friends and different perspectives. I feel that one of the things my family emphasizes is to not put too much time in studying the books; however, I find this belief very questionable. It is not enough to just be street smart. Being equipped with knowledge is more important then what my family thinks. I think I need to pursue my expertness in academics and I feel like sometimes my social life is taking the time for my academic pursues.

Reflection:

If you ask me “what are your top values” before I take this class, I will probably look at you totally confused. As a young adult, I find it often times hard to navigate what one really wants. The society has put so many things out there and there is a lot of freedom for each individual to choose to pursue whatever they want. In the process of dragging up and down my personal values in the class exercise, I gradually realized that it is locking down one’s top values is a very hard thing.

Through the reflection of my own value system, I realized that my values come from both eternal sources and internal sources. The external drives include my parents’ influences on me, my peers’ influences on me and the society’s culture context. I talked about how my parents valued friendships and I become a very friendly person, and I mentioned how my peers’ attitudes on romantic relationships forced me to have the sexual tension. The internal drive is more philosophical and through the education I received, I realized that the most important thing is integrity and having a good morality. I think that my internal thoughts and reflections about what is important to me made me who I am and I would encourage my peers to think through about personal value choices and if the motivations behind those values are healthy.

Future:

In the future, I would be focusing on making efforts to become who I want to be. As mentioned, I want to be a person of integrity and a caring person for my friends and the society in general, so I would make efforts in contributing more to the society, no matter through volunteering works in underrepresented communities or charitable donations. I will try my best to make sure that I don’t give up on becoming a better person.

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