Category: Unit 02

1. Family
2. Loyalty
3. Friendship
4. Enjoyment
5. Integrity
6. Wealth
7. Prestige
8. Power
9. Health
10. Independence
11. Personal Accomplishment
12. Security
13. Personal Development
14. Expertness
15. Creativity
16. Community
17. Wisdom
18. Leadership
19. Location
20.  Service

When reviewing the activities I did today against the twenty values I found that today I mainly did activities that involve friendship and enjoyment. In fact, out of all the activities I did today they all fell under my top 5 values (with the exception of brushing my teeth which would fall under the health category). I watched football (enjoyment), threw a ball around (enjoyment/friendship), called my brother (family/friendship), and hung out with my friends (friendship/enjoyment). As you can see the activities I did today played off of each other. To me my top values aren’t all different categories; they all mix together and intertwine. I find enjoyment from my friends and family. I am also loyal to them and find being honest to them is the best policy.

I think the largest belief pattern I inherited from my parents was that of loyalty and integrity. They brought me up to do the right thing and tell the truth always. I think that those are good beliefs and they still have authority over me and are relatively valid. I wouldn’t say honesty is always the best policy. Lying is better in some cases like: “does this dress make me look fat?” or “how was dinner?” but honesty is still an integral part of my belief system. You just have to know the right time where it’s better to lie to save someone’s feelings.

Americans take pride in the Democratic practice of choice.  We choose to think individually and believe in different things. This leads to a very muddled, confusing outlook on values. People could believe in x, y, z, or 27. So with the evident lack of regularity it is difficult to break down our beliefs to create a uniform set of values. Take the ongoing discussion on gay marriage. Some people strongly oppose gay marriage, some people think it’s an indisputable right, and some don’t care. I personally don’t think it is anyone’s business what goes on behind closed doors and if gay marriage bothers people so much they could simply not go to a church that allows it, but I digress. It is obvious in this situation people have different beliefs but if we break it down to the core value must people would align. If everyone is fighting over marriage then this means that people view marriage as something that is important. We can go even further and say that most people view marriage as a bond between two people that demonstrates their commitment and love for each other. Who is marrying who ends up being minor details. We all see the importance of marriage in a similar light even if we cannot ultimately decide who should marry whom; that is up to our own judgment. According to Lewis, we judge and create our own beliefs in four main ways: sense experience, deductive logic, emotion, and intuition. Sense experience means you learn directly through one (or more) of your five senses. Deductive logic means testing your beliefs to make sure that they consistently lead to the same answer. You judge based on emotion when you feel something is right or wrong. You make decisions through your intuition unknowingly (unconsciously); your brain comes to a judgment while you aren’t thinking about it. The latter four ways of “knowing” help shape our beliefs and values. If we return to the gay marriage example people could use any of these four to make their decision. They may also rely on two other modes of knowing that combine the four basic ones. The two new modes are authority and science. So one person may look to an authority figure like the church in their opinion on gay marriage (the bible); while another person relies on science (i.e the presence of gay animals in nature). We can determine our beliefs and values using any of these modes. We could be reliant on any one of these modes to make our judgments. One person may rely more on emotions while another relies on science. This is why I believe our values may come off as confusing and muddled. We have the ability to come to the same reasoning through different modes or different reasoning through the same mode.

Lewis, H. (1990). A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives. Axios Press.