Category Archives: Unit 2

My top five values are about family, friendship, personal betterment and having fun. I always save time during the weekend to talk to my family, to let them know how I am doing, as well as keeping up on what they are doing. I also made sure to spend time with friends this week, going to see a movie together. On a daily basis I make sure that I doing things that will make my life better, both in health and in the rest of life as well. This means studying hard, exercising, and eating well. All in the hopes of making sure that my life will be long and happy, filled with family and friends.

I learned from my family that hard work and respect for others are important to having a good life. I have kept those with me even moving so far away. One thing that has left me is the sense of spiritualism that my parents, or more accurately grandparents, had. While I have not totally abandoned these, I have learned to think differently than my family taught me, and to be open to more ways of thinking. My only goals that I have left are all about my career, and the only thing keeping me from them is finishing school and getting out there to see about getting them started.

There was one point that I think I had to point out in terms of disagreeing with the author from this week’s reading. To begin with the task of trying to explain the concept of human values in any limited space is difficult, so to fault the author for that would be incorrect. I do think that the use of anecdotal evidence in support of his position is the incorrect thing to be doing. In the section discussing inherited, or genetic, instincts in relation to values the author states evidence of ritual suicide and celibacy as proof against genetic instincts causing values. The issue that I had with this practice, is first that anecdotal evidence should not be to make a point, and second that simply because they chose to live in these ways does not mean that they did not value those genetic instincts. Taking the Tibetan celibacy as the focal point, the author contends that the sexual drive cannot be a genetically driven value because if it were then it would be universal, and these cases in Tibet would not happen. I think that this is an incorrect assumption that is being made. To begin with, these people are such a small case that it does not disprove the concept of genetic influence for the human species as a whole. More importantly for this discussion, even if the people in Tibet chose celibacy, it does not mean that they did not have that same sexual desires value that is genetically driven in many other cultures. Instead, it simply means that they valued something over that sexual desire, what that other value is I cannot say as for each person it would be different. Simply choosing to not do something does not mean that someone does not still have some values about it. All that it means is that the action that they did chose, in this case celibacy, was more important to them.