Assignment Objectives:

• Become familiar with the basic relationship of human values to psychological and philosophical endeavors.
• Understand that values are formed from external and internal drives of an individual.
• Explore one’s own value system.

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Reflection:

This was an interesting assignment.  It really made me take a second, step back, and look at how my values influence my daily life and which ones I “practice” most often.  Usually, one doesn’t think about how their own values come into play doing every day tasks like going to school, or talking to your friend.  However, everything we do comes back to our own value system in some way.  Then you look at which things you do most often and what value they represent, and you know which values are a priority and which are not.  It was very difficult to think of which values are most important because they are values for a reason: they’re all important.  However, there are some that hold a more important place in our hearts.  These are different for everyone: “it should be synonymous with personal evaluations and related beliefs…”(Lewis, 7).

I think taking the opportunity to evaluate one’s own value system makes you wonder why you value certain things over the others.  For example, my top three values were family, friendship, and integrity.  Lewis states that “we might still be controlled by the influence of genes on our underlying personality or, alternatively, by peer pressure, by the relentless demands of the society in which we happen to live” (Lewis, 8).  So, both internal and external forces may be influencing our value system.  This assignment made me realize that it is both, internal and external forces, that have an affect on my own value system and which values I hold more important than others.  I believe most people have about the same values as their family in which they grew up with, or at least, have influenced their values now.  My family (above), have been the most important people that have influenced what I believe in today.  They have been the ones to teach me what is important in life and that family will always be there to support one another (why they are my #1 value).  I also believe that our society holds an important role in influencing what we value most (take the importance of money for example).

Future:

For the most part, I think my values will stay about the same.  However, my surroundings will continue to change throughout my life, so that could have a different impact on how I prioritize some of them.  I know that my family will continue to influence my values and continue to show me what I should hold most important in my life.  I hope I will always continue to reflect on my values and be able to realize which ones I should practice on a daily basis.

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