Values and valueless values

"The Wit of Cheats, the Courage of a Whore, / Are what ten thousand envy and adore: All, all look up, with reverential Awe, / At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the Law: While Truth, Worth, Wisdom, daily they decry - Nothing is sacred now but Villainy'

~ "Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I" by Alexander Pope.

The world around us is changing. The youth of the world want the world run differently. They are tired of the tried and tested methods of buffoonery that pass off, and is often preached, as values. They find them valueless because they see around them the results these values had produced: poverty, inequality, corruption, greed, deceit, deception, duplicity, et cetera. What confounds them most is the hypocrisy of the older generation. They talk of fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance, and so on; but practice the opposite of all what they advocate, exhort, lecture, moralise, and sermonise.

That is something you learn about values: they are what people make up to justify what they did, or preach, but not practice. They talk, with twisted tongues, of the sacrosanctity of the country; but cherish not its natural wonders, cherish not the natural resources, cherish not its history and romance as a sacred heritage. Instead, they let selfish motives, or greedy interests, skin the country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. I suppose, a frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.

"Values represent ideals or goals that people in a society strive to achieve. Values also select the means that are used to achieve the goals or ideals. In the primitive society, primitively regulated by tradition and custom, the value structure is, relatively well

integrated and commonly agreed-upon. But, within a multifarious society, such as our own, there is considerable diversity, and often contradictions, within the value system," says Eldon E. Snyder, assistant professor of sociology, university of Ohio, USA.

Values are something regarded as desirable, worthy, or right: such as a belief, standard, or precept as in the values of a democratic society. But more often than not, when the elderly talk of values, they are talking about things like possessions, success, publicity, luxury, going to the temple or church, voting for this one or that one, being loyal to some distant cause, sacrifice, and manifold such matters: not values that matter, but valueless values. These are values, if they be that, that is neither best for the body nor the mind. .

Risky

To find in ourselves, values that make life worth living, is risky business; for it means that once we know, we must seek it. It also means that without it, life will be valueless, and hence, useless.

I have noticed that, very often, the values to which people cling most stubbornly, even under inappropriate conditions, are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs. Therefore, whether these values are values worthy of clinging to, or ought to be rid of, becomes a mute question because once useful, they see not the uselessness of it now.

The first principle of values that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws.

I am ashamed to think, how easily we capitulate our conscience to standards, and principles that do not define us as human beings; to falsehood and deception. Values are not vehicles that get us some place. They determine and interpret who we are. Tell me what you pay attention to, and I will tell you who you are.

If it ever occurs to us, as a people, to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort; and we would truly turn this blessed land into the paradise it was. "Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together," said John Ratzenberger, an American actor, and entrepreneur.

The only ethical principle that has made values pre-eminent is that the truth be told at all the time. If we do not penalise false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention; and a false statement, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a human can commit.

Amidst the changing array of values, honesty is the most heroic quality one can aspire to. To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which a man can descend in life.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad values may we have gathered, we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value - if the desire to do so is there.

I do not know what sort of world we will leave behind for the future generations to live in, and I have no fixed opinions concerning how one should live in it.

All I do know is, if we do not come to value what is true, above what is useful or gainful; it will make little difference whether we live at all. Not because it is the one value that will hold true, present or future; but because it is what marks the difference between mediocrity and pre-eminence in human nature.

"Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon." Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Change

In a fickle world, only change remains constant; and values are so fickle, it needs to change constantly. If not, as is happening often, the youth will rise in revolt.

The world today is culturally more uniplaner and unipolar than it ever was; and is becoming more so by the day; in spite of the traditional hesitancy of the old to accept this. As such, the challenges of a changing world need to be, addressed through changes to our present values; especially of the older generation.

It is imperative. After all, inappropriate, ill-suited, inadequate, insufficient; our current values has failed to give hope to our youth, for their future.

Its failures are there for all to see, the results blazing in our face as the mid-summer sun.

Hence, the fact that hypocrisy rules; greed prevails; injustice triumphs; will not be acceptable for the rising population of youth to whom the future is all that they have to look forward to.

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities.

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