According to the article, Human value is complex because it base on different modes.
Nowadays, media is also influence on people’s value. The huge amount of advertisements on TV, newspaper and other median are all use the slandered images, for example, the body images are all fit and beautiful, to influence people’s value of beauty. Women are wearing makeup and thin, men are fit and has muscle, all of these images are telling people : body like these are beautiful. Media creates the standers for body images and people who always see these images would trend to accept the stander. Meanwhile, when they think about “beautiful””health”, the images will come up to their mind. this is the reason why that most women think they are too fat even though their weight are actually normal. This is also the reason that today’s women are all trying to loss weight, some of them are eating disorderly. The rapid development of media has effected more and more people’s value everyday.
There is a question that the author asks in the article:” If values are freely chosen personal evaluations and believes, How do we arrive at these evaluations and believes?”As the author pointed out: firstly we come out to believe something, it may come from our culture, family, school, which can be classified as four main modes: sense experience, logic, emotions and intuition( Lewis). However, There are also two important mental modes: Authority and science. In my opinion, the authority and science has important effects on human values. For example, I have a friend Brain, he borne in a Christian family, he went to church during his entry life. His value about life and choices are mostly influenced by his family and what he heard from the church. At age 29, he got divorced and he started to question about what he used to believe. He decided to go back to school to started his two master degree, which were theology and linguistics. After he got the degree of these two majors, he gave up his religion. He started to change his lifestyle and travel more places. Clearly, authority and science could be the factor that changed his value. “Cognitive moral education builds on the belief that students should learn to value things like democracy and justice as their moral reasoning develops “(Santrock).
Works Cites
Santrock, J.W. (2007). A Topical Approach to Life-Span Development. New York, NY
You have mentioned that environmental conditions such as advertisement, TV, newspaper and other forms of media influence on human values. I agree with your comments as most people admire celebrities appeared in media and follow their behaviors. Obviously, people gather information and keep them in mind as a driver of one’s life. Moreover, you mentioned that the two metal modes, authority and science are important factors to build one’s value. When we slightly think of our value, your statement seems to be normal. However, I think that those influences are created by some bias. People easily accept the information in a way of that an author depicts. People just follow someone’s point of view rather than relying on their own thoughts. For instance, Christians believe that drinking alcohol and smoking is bad, but many Christians do that. Even though they value on something from religious education, they do not follow them. They pretend to have a value on religious influences try to show their beliefs to public. I think that is not a pure mean of value. As most people consider something which most people follow as a value, there would be hard to find out a distinctive value. It is no exaggeration that modern people do not have their own creative value. In science aspects, there are huge things that science cannot prove. People just build their values based on norms that current social systems have created. The author states in page 17 that “Even if I accept the preceding argument (that a broad and objective look at values would be useful but is not likely to come from priests, ministers, rabbis, philosophers, or psychiatrists, insofar as they are acting as specialists), I wonder whether anybody, specialist or not, can ever be objective”
Hello, Dongjoon, Thanks for your comment. You have brought out a fact that people gain some values from outside rather than create them by themselves, which is normally happens on everyone. I believe we all have seen some people around us have this kind of values. For example, people have religions, but they are doing what they are not supposed to do. I have asked myself, why they don’t practice what they believe. However, after a while, I realized, they are not really believe in their religion, even though the definition of religion values is : “religion values are principles founded in religious traditions, texts and beliefs” ( Jains). Believe and belief are strong words, it takes personal understanding rather than just being influenced, however, in most religion family that I have known, the younger generation are born with their religion role in the family, and in the church. They follow what their family follows and value what their family values. Their religion values are gained through influence instead of self discovering. Thats why when they go to college and another environment, they will easily changes their value or stop practicing it. I don’t think this is bad, everyone has this kind of moment in life that we compare personal values and religious-based values and then find out what we really want.
Work Cites
Jains in the world: religious values and ideology in India John E. Cort – Religion – 2001 – 267.
Hi, Xiaoxue, I’m just read through your response to A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives. You talked about the media influence people’s value. In some extent, I agree with your point. Media definitely shape people’s value into some fixed value range. For example, slim and beautiful women image always was used in the advertisement promotion. It produces a general aesthetical standard among people. However, does people’s value affect media’ publicize and promote or media influence people’s value? We can’t deny that media was created by human. In this logic, human share the value and publish the value through the media.
Lewis stated, “although the term values is often used loosely, it should be synonymous with personal evaluations and related beliefs, especially personal evaluations and beliefs about the “good”, the “just” and the “beautiful,” (p.7). So, people’s value is basically changing through their evaluation and belief. When people reach a consensus about aesthetical standard, they begin to use this criterion to promote something that can resonate others. Therefore, he value of people affect the way how the media promote something.