"Your Personal Values System"
Assorted threads and recent work-related experiences have got me wondering about how certain people form their ideas about how to negotiate life and treat others. I am very curious and hope you will share.
Who did you learn you values from?
Do you currently deem them all good?
What have you learned on your own? And starting at what age?
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
I learned my basic values (compassion, think before you speak, treat others how I'd like to be treated) from my mom. I do my best to adhere to them...it's what she tried to instill. Sometimes I say more than I should, which is something that she does too...at what point do you worry about turning into your parents? lol
Other, more recent values...well, it's hard to say. I've always been really concerned about animals. I found some stories I wrote when I was in fifth grade a while back, and it's the kind of stuff that would make Peta proud. I don't remember writing them, but I do remember...I've always just been very emotionally drawn and protective over vulnerable creatures. I'd be the girl in school who'd hang out with the social outcast girl, always put upon. But I was no saint either, because sometimes I'd almost feel burdened by my responsibility to stick up for people? Hard to explain. I was kind of this brat deep down who wanted to be cool, but I would grudgingly break off from the peer fun. And at the other extreme, I'd mop my arms through the slaughtered steer entrails at the farm, and bawl my eyes out for the injustice suffered by poor Charlie (the look on my dad's face when he found me...hahah, god). Like, anything treated cruelly, in fiction or reality, has always really, really gotten to me. I have this memory of my toddler brother stomping over tree frogs, and I held his leg in futility...when he broke away and squashed another frog i just totally lost my shit. It was devastating. Those poor little frogs. I thought my brother was a monster.
Then I decided to study ethics, but what I've found is that I have certain instincts that all the ethical rationalism in the world cannot dissuade. I think I've learned about how tricky values can be, but it's only helped me...it's taught me the difficulty of consistently applying what I believe. Martha Nussbaum, Seneca, Kant, Susan Moller Okin, and Peter Singer have all been really interesting...Reading these people has helped shape my values into something more definable.
I don't deem my materialism a good value. I still find myself wanting to shop and buy nice things, when I know that this is not exactly a good value. Not as important as it sometimes feels. This is a value I think was instilled upon me since first seeing a tv commercial.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
I think I formed the vast majority of my values on my own because I received very mixed messages from my family. I think of my 20s as the years I systematically undid all the damage from them. College was a huge help as well as my more opinionated friends who would put nearly everything to a debate. I looove self-help books and biographies. Great stores of guidance and no-bullshit advice.
I like most of my values and the shallower ones I try to keep in balance like my beauty lust and money lust and wanderlust and of course just plain lust! :P
I've learned how to connect with people without getting run over by them and how to get ahead in life and live true to myself. I've learned how to build healthy relationships and recognize the BS artists before they inflict lasting damage.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
This is a really good thread idea, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
1. I learned my values from my parents.
2. I currently deem them rather poor, in fact. This is a depressing and confounding way to feel, but it's definitely interesting. My parents are very conditional people in the purest sense of the word. They will help you, love you, cheer you on, bail you out, take you back--- IF. If it's something they approve of. If you're someone they're okay with. If you're doing it their way. And what this means, generally, is that in order to win their approval, you must be educated, employed, insured, heterosexual, childless (if unmarried), monogamous (if married), neither over- nor underweight, monotheistic (but not too observant... spirituality undermines pragmatism), sober, omnivorious, diurnal... the list goes on. I think this is because my parents are self-made successes who believe the only recipe for success is to model their behavior. However, I have known for a long time that I would never be happy with my parents' lives, so I stopped emulating them at a very early age.
For the record, my parents are not mean. They are kind to children, plants, animals, and minorities. They do not yell or hit; they vote democrat and condemn capital punishment. Yet, they are deeply self-centered, irritatingly self-righteous, dangerously manipulative, and they have never been happy with me. It's part of the reason I hate myself as much as I do; God as my witness, I never want my "principles" to cause so much uncertainty and self-loathing.
3. Many of the values I have embraced as my own are the opposite of those of my parents. That is, my values are kind of the inverse of theirs. It's a work-in-progress; I don't really know where I stand on a lot of issues, or how I feel about a great many earthly phenomena, or what I'm supposed to do with myself. But I do know a little bit about what I'm not supposed to do, how not to treat people, etc. It's a start, I suppose.
P.S. I love my parents and in no way am I trying to pull a "poor me" move. A lot of what I wrote is just venting, because my parents and I just had an argument about some of these very issues. So take my gripes with a grain of salt, I guess.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
I was taught most of my values from my parents and grandparents. I was always taught to say "please" and "thank you" , how to behave when visiting someone's home and to respect the elderly, I value that very much. I think teaching to manners to children starting at an early age it's definately a good thing. I think it helps them to strive in social environments much better as adults.
Another value I was taught was honesty. Establishing trust with others becomes very important when forming relationships, whether it be career relationships or romantic relationships or friendships.
Those are two values I can think of off the top of my head I was proud to be taught.
Some I am not so proud of and don't practice are eat everything on your plate and don't waste. Today we have an overwhelming amount of food available to us and when we go out we usually get more than we need in one setting. If I ate everything on plate when I went out to eat I'd be 300 lbs.
I learned quite a bit on my own probably starting around age 14 or so. Which is when my mother got sick and my father started to become absent in my life. I decided I wasn't going to reject someone based upon their race as to whether or not I wanted to be their friend. My school was about 35% African American. I give everyone a chance. Trash comes in all forms, white and black.
As I got closer to 16 I decided there was huge world outside my small town and I wanted to see it. I have traveled quite a bit for personal pleasure and some when I was a flight attendant.
My mother was schizophrenic. There were many times I had to decipher what was real and what was not.
I don't trust people hardly at all and find few to be geniune. She didn't trust either. I think I picked some of that up from her and some from my life experiences.
I could elaborate all day. But these are just a few things right off the top of head.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
Another thing I taught myself was not participate in gossip. My southern family loves to do it. It's a double-edged sword.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
I started trying to answer this, but realized that it would have taken hours. My value system seems to be a never ending work in progress.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
Quote:
Originally Posted by
xdamage
I started trying to answer this, but realized that it would have taken hours. My value system seems to be a never ending work in progress.
Same here. I could write a book on how I developed my personal value system. I've come a loooong way, and almost all of my values come from experiences/hardships I have overcome along with lessons I have learned in life 'the hard way.' I gained them all from family, friends, and lovers. :)
ETA: I'm still growing and learning more each day.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
Values:
from my Momma -
Manners, respect for others. Cooking, how to keep a home
The rest I learned from a very well educated, very well put together call girl. She's prolly dead now, but wow. The stuff I learned from her. How to be a lady. How to treat true men properly and how to treat men that needed to learn how to treat a lady.
How to dress myself in a stylish fashion, how to put on makeup - all the girly things I learned from this beautiful, elegant prostitute.
The rest of the stuff that I know, which sometimes amounts to a hill of beans - I got from the school of hard knocks. That brick wall is hard sometimes..
From my Marine friends - Loyalty, honor - never leaving anyone behind. Weapons, care of and shooting. How to blow things up. ( haha)
How to drink, swear - eat fast and be on time. Then wait. Ha.
I also learned that Marines are fun to play with but they are just not cut out to marry me. :D
From my cousin, I learned about horses. How to and what not to do. He was in my eyes a good man - might not of been to other people. What horse trader is? :P
But to me, the sun set on his behind.
RIP Butch, some of us still love you.
Now before I get all mushy, I'm going to go do something.. yeah. :D
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
My values are slowly erroding over time. They started out as the only consolation I had all through childhood in the face of constant abuse from my peers. I was "better" than them, and that got me through the day. The moral high ground was my security blanket, but it doesn't keep one warm at night. As time has passed, I've cared less and less about the moral high ground and more and more about scraping up what little bits of happiness I can find. So, my mountain of values slowly erodes under the slow watery drip of pain.
Maybe once I've soberd up I'll edit this into a more positive post. :P
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lestat1
Maybe once I've soberd up I'll edit this into a more positive post. :P
If I were still drinking, this would be in my new siggy.
Re: "Your Personal Values System"
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lestat1
...As time has passed, I've cared less and less about the moral high ground and more and more about scraping up what little bits of happiness I can find. So, my mountain of values slowly erodes under the slow watery drip of pain.
I've watched your posts for a while stat... FWIW I don't think your morales are eroding. I just think you're becoming more assertive about what you want, which is a very good thing.