Category: Unit 02

Ordered list:

1. Family
2. Health
3. Friendship
4. Wealth
5. Enjoyment

—————————————————————–

6-20:

Leadership，Loyalty,Wisdom,Creativity, Security, Personal Accomplishment, Integrity, Independence, Personal Development, Prestige, Expertness, Community, Service, Power, Location

I put family, health, friendship, wealth, and enjoyment as my top five in my value list. I know lots of people think putting wealth to the fourth position is very worldly, but honestly I think wealth is the basic of many things except family, friends and health in the real world. Take today as an example. Sunday is the last day of this week and I have a lot to do. I have three roommates and we share a two-bedroom apartment because this is much cheaper, and our agreement of sharing room to save money represents that we care about wealth.  We are all international students studying abroad that show our independence, and we became close friends since we lived together that show our friendship.  We also watched a movie called Gravity for enjoyment since we all like movies. I contact with my parents everyday using WeChat, which is an app like Line, and I love to talk about my day with them and I know they love to hear. I ate two times a day and an apple at night to keep healthy, and I believe I am responsible for my own health.

I am the only child in my family, so my parents gave all they can give to me. When I was little, my father kept saying he wishes me noting but three things, be healthy, be happy, and be aspirant. I don’t understand what these mean at first, but I start to understand now. My family was very poor when I was born, and my parents played an exemplary role to show me their positive quality. They are strong, optimistic, and frugal; they respect to each other and they dutiful to their parents. I would keep these positive qualities, but there is one thing I will get rid of. They are told to be a person who their parents want them to be, but I won’t. My parents want me to be a doctor because they think doctor is a very good career, but I don’t like to learn medicine. My goal for myself is to be who I want to be and show my parents my decision is right. They love me so they did not force me to learn medicine in college, and I am finding my way to achieve my goal. Although I haven’t decided my major, I am happy now because I took different courses in different area and this is fun. I will find my interests and I know I will insist it till the end.

After reading “A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives”, I start to consider how human value be shown in real life. Press did not define the term of value because he said this is a “relatively recent one and is sometimes dismissed as a piece of barbarous jargon” (p.7). It is hard to just ask people what value is so the author gave six characteristic systems based on different attitude or way that people behave, which are authority, deductive logic, science, intuition, experience, and emotion. It is very interesting that Press discussed why people believe something, and I agree with him that there are mutable reasons can let a person believe something. For example, I don’t believe there exists one thing called UFO, at least not now. I keep seeing news says that some people saw UFO and even took a photo of it, but I still don’t believe them. However, one day my best friend told me that she saw a UFO once when she was very little, and she seriously pretty sure that was that. I start to kind believe there might have UFO because I trust my friend. Lots of examples like this can show that people’s belief or mind is very marvelous and hard to explain.

It is smart to put intangible idea into categories, and people will find one class that suitable them the most. Press also pointed out that people might not just belong to a single category, and it can be “cross-fertilized”. Although that six categories seems very professional and it makes they can categorize most individual, I think they are too general at some point. To be specific, male and female has different attitude about life, and the value of one person also might change along with he or she growing. People change and so do their value. Myself is a good example because I can feel my value and my thoughts are quite different compare to three years ago because of the study abroad experience, and I believe my parents’ value also change because of me.

In short, our values are the different not only just because of different life experiences, more importantly, we are totally different individuals, and each individual has independent way of viewing the world.