For this weeks reading of “A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives” by Lewis, H. I have come to challenge myself in understanding what my personal values are and how I got to have that value meaning what type of mode did I use to obtain that value. I had never heard of values being separated as Lewis did in his book. But they all made perfect sense. I even tried to come up with values that did not fall under one category but Lewis was correct. Every personal value was categorized in either: Sense experience, Deductive Logic, Emotion, Intuition, Authority, or Science. Personally I feel that many of my values are in the emotion mode and authority mode. For example one of my values is family. This is strictly under the emotion mode because mentally I just feel that it is true. It is not based on somebody else’s beliefs (authority mode) it’s not due to my 5 senses (sense experience mode), and I can’t scientifically prove it with observation and tests (science mode), etc.
In the second section of Lewis’s book, I found his comment about how somebody can be like another and share some values with them as well as a few other people but still be totally different type of person whether they have similarities or not. There can be people that share many personal values and still be completely different and I believe that goes down to what is later on mentioned about determining the importance of your values. Two people could have the same value of wealth but one person has the value of wealth at the top of their list and the other person could the have the value of wealth at the bottom of their list.
Something I am struggling to understand however is when Lewis states the following: “human beings cannot separate the way they arrive at values from the values themselves” and then follows by stating how we emphasize one value over another. I don’t really understand what he is trying to say here. I don’t understand how trying to separate how you got to your value and the value itself and emphasizing certain values over others connect to each other.
This reading has gotten me thinking about what exactly my value are in life and what values triumph over each other. I am eager to take the Life Values Assessment this week.
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After reading A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape our Lives, by Lewis H. and reading your post, I have many similar thoughts and concerns. I found your second paragraph particularly interesting in that it seems strange to have the same values as someone else, yet be two completely different people. From the reading, Lewis brings up a great point to support this on page 14 about Obie Wan Kenobie and Darth Vader. While the two are complete opposites, they still both value trust and following your emotions. This is why it is important to consider where these values stem from and how they play into each person’s life to differentiate people’s values.
In response to your third paragraph on what you were struggling with after this reading, it seems as though the author brings this point up in order to get the reader thinking about how we come about our values. I think he is trying to point out that how we arrive at our values are already intertwined into our values that it is hard to separate the two.
For example, there may be many factors that go into a particular personal value and therefore would be hard to separate the value from what goes into arriving at the value. Such as when the author brings up intuition on page 9 and how our unconscious mind plays a large role in determining our values. If this comes into play then it would be hard to determine how we arrived at a particular value, but what becomes more important is just the value itself. Do you think it’s important to know where our values stem from or just the values themselves?
After reading your blog, I want to share some similar thoughts and concerns with you. Family is also an important value to me which is under my emotion mode. My value of family is also under my sense category. I experienced how my parents and other family members built their values of family and I believe I have similar value with them.
I agree with your opinion that two people may have the same value but with different degree of the value. In addition, even two people with the same value at the same degree could act differently because of different values from other aspects. For example, two people have the same value with the same degree toward their children. One of them love his children a lot and he is willing do everything to satisfy their children’s wants. The other one also love his children, but instead of getting everything to his children, he teaches his children to study hard and work hard to get everything they need by themselves. Both of the two people have the same value to love their children but with different values to teach their children.
According to what you were struggling with, I believe the author wanted to emphasize the relationship between the value itself and the way people reach the value. I believe people will reach different values differently. For example, people will probably build the value of family by experiencing with their family and people will probably build the value of love by experiencing with their husbands or wives. Also, in my review blog this week, I pointed out a problem that if what we believe is not true and our value is not right, how can we identify it and adjust it. I hope you can provide some of your ideas for that.
ges@uoregon.edu,
Thank you for replying to my post! Your insight about my issue understanding Lewis statement of “human beings cannot separate the way they arrive at value over another.” really helped me. In response to your question at the end I do believe it would be important to understand where your value stems from but I don’t think it necessarily would make an impact whether you did know or not. It seems that when you find a value important enough then that is the end of the story. Whether it was your intuition mode or sense experience mode you would still feel just as strong about that value. For example my value of family and love. Most of this value is simply from the emotion mode. i just know and feel strongly about this value. i feel like it doesn’t matter how i got this value just that it is my value. Does that make sense?
Ziqi,
Thank you as well for replying to my post! I like your example of two people having the same value to love their children but the value of teaching their children is different. this example pinpoints ways how people can have the same value but me completely different types of people and lead different types of lives.
I like that you challenged yourself by evaluating your own values against the different modes that Lewis brings up in his article. It is interesting to find out the primary mode other people use. While yours is emotion based I use mostly deductive reasoning and so we would probably come to different conclusions on the same subject if we used our individual primary modes. I agree that the importance of values can and will differ among people. Even if we’re very similar we might stress different modes and so can end up with different conclusions.
In reference to the portion that confuses you. From what I understand when Lewis says: “human beings cannot separate the way they arrive at values from the values themselves”, he means that our values are a part of us. Our values are so ingrained within us it’s hard to understand how we originally came to value them so much. For instance you value your family and you can attribute it to the emotion mode; so it is probably hard to separate any thoughts or decisions you make that have to do with your family from your emotions. That is how I understand the quotation at least. I also am excited to take the Life Values Assessment and it was great to hear your point of view on the Lewis reading.
Jocelyn,
Thank you for your response to my comment. It is interesting to see that you believe it doesn’t necessarily matter whether you know where your values stem from, but rather just the values themselves. This is actually exactly how I feel also. I wanted to get someone else’s opinion on the matter because I felt as though Lewis thought it was important to know, but was saying sometimes humans can’t separate how they arrived at the value with the value itself. Which makes complete sense now because even if a person were to know how they arrived at a certain value, it isn’t going to change how they feel about that value. It will just further enhance their belief for this value and help them learn more about themselves. Your example was very helpful in understanding this point because sometimes you don’t necessarily have a reason for a value, it just feels right. That brings about the emotion mode that Lewis was talking about. I look forward to reading more of your posts.