What are values? Not something you hear on TV. Not something people talk over dinner very often either. Values are a person’s principles or standards of behaviour, one’s judgment of what is important in life. It is a complex subject and one that is so fundamental that stays at the core of our lives, even if we don’t realise it.
Values are initially formed in childhood. We learn from our parents to attribute respect to our grandparents and elderly people, to love our pets, go to mass or watch football on Sunday. Dad might be wearing a pinstriped suit and talk about money and investments a lot, or get really heated when a poor family in the news is losing benefits and being evicted from public housing. Mum might go to Amway events, or support a campaign to save the polar bear from extinction. You might have been born in a very conformist, law obeying household or be exposed to more hedonistic behaviour.
Different societies embrace distinct cultural values. As human beings, we are a lot more similar than the sometimes fear mongering media wants us to believe, yet when it comes to attitudes towards religion, for instance, societies can be very different. The importance of organised faith is decreasing very much in countries like Canada and everywhere in Europe. Religion is comparatively more relevant in the US and very important in Morocco, Georgia and Bangladesh.
What we express as a worthy value, or what we aspire to be personally, are sometimes very different from what we actually do in real life. Some might be heard saying everyone should be contributing through the means of tax, yet look for every possible loophole to avoid paying their fair share. Publicly demonise certain behaviours or segments of society to then act the same way, behind closed doors.
And our value systems evolve and change as we develop as human beings, as we go through phases in life. As a teenager, I was putting a lot of pressure on my mum to buy me branded, expensive clothes. Last week I bought 3 funky looking second-hand t-shirts from the night market in Koh Samui at 1.5 GBP a piece and I hardly spend more than 30 minutes a month buying clothes these days. I really value contact with nature, my almost daily yoga practice and good homemade food as part of a healthy lifestyle.
One of the most inspiring pieces of research I found on the Internet aims to categorise values into 10 distinct groups or clusters. I love representing reality through ranges, wheels and continuums, it’s great visually and consistent with a diverse and inclusive view of the world.
Where are you right now, on the wheel of values? Are you a creative, ultra-independent world traveller? Ambitious, hard working city dweller? Wealthy and high status or humble and devoted? Of course, you might value many things, yet in your life choices and behaviours, you will prioritise certain ones over others. Your current lifestyle will give you a clue or two of where you could be on this model.
Why bother, though? Well… some people appreciate personal development and the discovery of the self. We can apply different lenses to reality to get to know what’s in and out of us. The Yoga philosophy takes us to a higher consciousness through meditation. Travelling the world and being exposed to different traditions stimulate awareness and cultural sensitivity. Western psychology can be used to add a new layer of comprehension. This representation of value systems is yet another perspective on our personal lives and society as a whole. A very remarkable 14th-century Italian thinker wrote: “…you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge”. This well depicts one of my core values. Life, to me, is a wonderful journey of personal growth towards greater awareness and understanding. How about you?