What are values? Are values distinct from the things we value? There are the things we value, and the value of the things we value; i.e. the value inherent in those things. What are core values? What is a value system? Do people really have divergent value systems?
Most of the people on these forums value pornography. Is pornography a value? Or is there an especially erotic aesthetic in the photographs we find here that speaks to us in particular? Perhaps the value we find in pornography is it’s power to arouse us sexually. Clearly what arouses on person won’t necessarily arouse another. But I think it’s an unusual human being that doesn’t value sexual arousal. It’s a value everyone has but few own up to.
Most people value education. Of course education is not a value. Truth, knowledge and intellectual integrity are the values we seek and we aspire to educate ourselves. Even the few who mock the university education and tout the self-made man, do so because in their estimation it is the self-made man who is the more likely to be knowledgeable, have intellectual integrity and speak the truth.
Most people value life. Of course we still eat living things. We don’t care so much if others get ill and can’t afford the simple medical procedures that would save them. When we say we value life, we’re usually thinking of our own. We still have capital punishment and we still fight wars. Nevertheless most of us will say that we value life in some general sort of way. Even pro-choice feminists and gun toting NRA members who brag about how they’d kill anyone who crosses their threshold uninvited. They just disagree on the details. Is a small colony of a few hundred cells embedded in the uterine wall of a woman an independent life. Is the value of the trespasser’s life equal to that of your own?
It seems to me that almost all human beings have the same values. We value family, truth, wisdom, life, security, joy, freedom etc. Talk of divergent value systems has always mystified me...the questions posed above.
