Unit 2: Response to Reading
The reading laid out thoughts on how we as social creatures develop and determine our values. The author outlined internal forces (experience, deduction, emotion, intuition), as well as two external, or synthetic, forces that shape how we for our set of values. The authority force was the one I find most interesting. There as long been the question of “nature vs. nurture”, and I am one to subscribe to the idea that how we are brought up paired with the experiences we encounter are the primary forces driving us to become the people that we are. Specifically, the influential people in our lives that most often take on roles of authority (e.g. teachers, parents, older siblings, etc). The relational dynamic plays the key role in the development of our values. When we are young, it is much easier to “draw a conclusion without having to see, feel, or think it through from the beginning on our own”, it being a value or set of values (p.10). This indoctrination of values starts from a very early age, and is seen most prevalent in religion. The values of an authority figure in a persons life, especially early on, is almost always perpetuated through the generations. The impressionability of a child supplemented by an internal need to be accepted allows for a situation in the developmental years where values are passed on as if they were genetic, but are still the result of social conditioning. I was watching a movie that chronicled Jackie Robinson’s trials while being the first black man to play major league baseball (titled “42”), and there was a scene that I think perfectly illustrates this idea that our values, at least in the early years, are almost entirely derived from the values of the authority figures in our lives. The scene shows a father and a son having a wholesome conversation while sitting on the bleachers waiting for the baseball game to start. The second that Jackie takes the field, the father stands up and begins screaming racial slurs. The son looks at his father, rather dramatically, acting the way he is, and stands to join his father yelling obscenities towards Jackie. It was much easier for the sun to take on the values of his father in that moment, than it would have been for him to think through the situation on his own and come to a different set of values relating to race.
I think that our values come from authorities, especially in our early ages. However, the values that we learn change over time in my opinion. We have some background of values that our parents, teachers taught us but when we grow up we starting to develop our own opinions and we are mature enough to determine which values are important to us. I think that because people are different from each other and because they define words differently they also value different things. And even though someone grew up in a family who had strong religious background does not mean that they will continue to believe in the same things that he/she believed growing up. The majority of people will follow their families’ values but not everyone. There are going to be people who will go in different directions and will start believing in something else or stop believing at all. The questions are: why some people strongly follow their values they were taught while growing up and why other choose not to? where is the limit? what are the reasons of those people who make different choice? Are values really that important to people?
To answer the final question you proposed, I think that values are the most important factor in every person’s decision making process. Values, however, aren’t something that we explicitly think about, meaning they are not in the forefront of our minds. Our values make up our cognitive foundation. They are universal truths that we as individuals subconscious choose to live our life around. They affect our every decision, without us even knowing it. I would venture to guess that many of us have values that we are unaware of, and it’s only until we step back to examine our behavior, specifically the choices we make, we realize what we value.
I would definitely agree with you in regards to people developing their own values apart from those values that were derived from authority figures. I myself have developed completely different values from the values that my parents hold (some completely contradicting their values). I think individual experiences and differences in our personalities play a contributing role in the development of personal values outside those of the authority figures in our lives.
I really enjoyed your post as well as your response to the first comment written on your values post. We have a very similar approach to the basis of values and how they serve our everyday lives.
I also strongly agree with you that in our early lives, authority figures play a constant and everlasting role in the values that we choose to use or disuse. Whether we directly take and integrate the values that are present around us due to our authority figures, or if we experience those values and choose a different set of values contrary to those you were surrounded by, you are still being influenced by your environment no matter what. With that said, I agree with you that nurture plays a profound effect on who we ourselves choose to become and what we choose to encompass. However, although we end up being able to separate our own values from the values that we were surrounded by as children, is there an exception with children? What I mean by that is, even though a child may have grown up around his or her parents having a set of values, could that child have completely strayed away from these values even at a young age? Or are the values that the authority figures had automatically the values that the child shared as well?