Category Archives: Unit 02

Family
Enjoyment
Service
Creativity
Wisdom
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Integrity
Expertness
Prestige
Security
Independence
Loyalty
Personal Development
Personal Accomplishment
Health
Friendship
Power
Leadership
Wealth
Location
Community

Most of my day today was devoted to homework, but on a small scale, I think I stuck to my top 5 values very well. I spent time with my sister, who thankfully goes to school at the University of Oregon with me. We ate breakfast together and enjoyed our time together. I also scheduled time for my own enjoyment: reading and watching football so that my day was not solely work. I helped my sister and my girlfriend with some of their chores and their work, and though this is not the large scale service I ultimately want to devote myself too, in the parameters of the day, it fits the mold. Finally, I think in doing my work, I was able to grow creatively and in terms of wisdom. Just forcing myself to work and to perform helps me hone in on these values.

I doubt whether any of my values rose completely separate from the lessons I learned from my family, and I have a hard time arguing that any value is not valid. Even in this list of twenty beliefs, all are important to me.  I love my community, and I would love to be able to help it and continue connecting to it. But I think the belief system that I hold in highest regard is the pursuit of knowledge. Wisdom is fifth on my list, mostly because I think that ultimately knowledge is what can help others on a grand scale. I also want to be happy, which is a belief that my parents had a large part in developing. I want to enjoy my life and enjoy the people I spend it with, and to me, my family are the people I get along best with. I still have a lot of goals that I have not accomplished. I am happy for the most part, but I have not even begun the stage of my life where I have the independence and means to express myself the way I want to. When this comes, I will better be able to pursue my major goals.

After getting the article started Lewis asks about where our values come from (6). The answer is everywhere. Right? Even in Lewis’s example of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s value judgment, I debate whether or not he is calling for emotion and not a mixture of emotion and intuition (13). And even deeper, where did those emotions come from? Most likely, they come from an accumulation of all the subjective experiences of a lifetime. Perhaps I feel similar to the friend he cites toward the end of his paper:  “Anybody who tries to count the ways we choose values does not know what values are” (17).  And I think Lewis answers this objection flippantly and not thoroughly enough to convince me.

The most important thing about values is the values themselves, not necessarily how we get to them. Lewis argues that “human beings cannot separate the way they arrive at values from the values themselves” (13), but the evidence he gives is two Jedi warriors from a science fiction movie. I do not know where or when I came to believe in the value of treating people with respect. For me that process has dissolved into the value itself. The counter argument will be that my belief in that value would not be strong without the process in which I obtained it and strengthened it. This is true, but it does not make the categorization of the value relevant or even possible. Over 21 years, the process has become an incalculable amalgamation of everything I know. Is it emotional? Sure. Is it intuitive? Yes. Is it everything? Absolutely.

The point is Lewis showed me nothing to convince me that a value can have a different property depending on its categorization. As long as the intensity of the experience is the same, it does not matter whether I was told by an authority figure about the destructive power of hatred or whether I oppose it based purely on emotion.