- Friendship
- Family
- Enjoyment
- Personal Development
- Leadership
- Integrity
- Wisdom
- Service
- Creativity
- Loyalty
- Independence
- Health
- Community
- Personal Accomplishment
- Security
- Expertness
- Wealth
- Prestige
- Power
- Location
My top five in comparison to what I have done today is fairly similar as I feel these top five values that I chose are what I try and represent everyday. Today I went to class, did homework, spoke with my family, and had some down time with friends which truly incorporates my top five life values according to this list. When I went to class, I was aiding in my personal development and by participating in the class, I was also helping solidify the life value I try to represent being a leader. By doing my homework I am also trying to better myself and further my personal development. The final things that were important to me today included talking with my family and spending time with my friends as I feel that these are my most important life values as doing these also brings me my most enjoyment.
My belief patterns have been shaped since a young age but ultimately are determined from my level of enjoyment from them as I feel personal enjoyment is the most important thing in life. I believe that most of these values I inherited from my family as the importance of family and personal improvement are things that are encouraged in my family. Further down the list I feel that I am not fully capable to express these life values as I have not been given the opportunity to empower these because I do not have much authority to help create wealth or work on expertness. Ultimately my life values are very important to me as they are seen through my daily actions and represent who I am as a person.
I was very intrigued by the reading, most specifically the debate between whether values truly exist or whether humans are driven by natural instinct. This is a very interesting topic as I feel that we develop human values through our instincts and our experiences in life. The article states a clear difference in how we as humans still develop our own human values throughout life but also states, “The proposition that individual human beings are programmed into their values, either by the influence of genes on personality or by social pressures, can neither be proven nor refuted” (Lewis). I believe that we are not programmed into values but our values are influenced by genes and social experiences. I feel that my experiences led to my values, specifically my experience in sports at a young age. One of my personal values is to treat everyone with respect and to be kind to all and doing sports at a young age I feel molded this by being taught to display great sportsmanship at all times. I always felt that displaying great sportsmanship not only helped when playing sports but carried value off the field. To this day I do my best to treat everyone with respect and I feel that my experience in sports has helped me create that value.
I also feel a little confused on the concept in the article they spoke about the concept of knowing something. They believe knowing is based on a number of factors including things from emotion to authority to science. My confusion comes when I look at knowing something through emotion or authority, then being “disproved” on another front like science or logic. My question to this would be whether we can at any point be 100 percent on a subject or whether it is up to us as people and our beliefs and experiences to know whether something is true or not?
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