The Importance Of Human Values In Human Life

Personal values, beliefs, and principles are important for individuals to know about themselves. However, when asked the question, “what are your personal values, beliefs, and principles?” The first response is often a laundry list of characteristics with the assumption that those three words are synonymous. From my experience when posed this question the laundry list became long and in retrospect, I began to wonder what the differences were between each of these terms. As a teacher, employee, mother, and Christian knowing these differences and how to answer the question is an important component of determining how I make decisions when faced with ethical dilemmas. Hence, began the investigation of how the terms relate, their meaning and what my answer is to this question. Since my laundry list was quite long for this essay, I will share and explain the top two elements for each category, how they relate to one another and how the knowledge influences tough decisions.

“The Agricultural Revolution transformed the earth and changed the fate of humanity…” Robyn Davidson once said. The people of Earth are still affected by the worst mistake in human history, so obviously it changed the fate of the human race forever. The Agricultural Revolution is an event that happened nearly ten-thousand years ago. This event brought us horrible diseases, inequality with gender hierarchies, and the horrors of slavery.

In today’s society, we have become consumed within the materialistic aspects of a lavished lifestyle. Human nature commonly functions on the concept of we want what we can not have. However, conceptualized in “Walden,” as well as “Silent Spring,” we must work with nature not against it. Over time, agricultural technologies have developed, this complex system has encountered a number of changes on many different levels. There are an abundant amount of ways in which our system produces and distributes these goods, and as time goes on, and resources become more sparse, agriculture has had to adapt to a number of situations in order to survive and provide for the world. Thus, as time has proceeded, in general, humans have distanced themselves

As human beings, we have all experienced the notion of being plagued by a single, paralyzing, and perhaps irrational fear. Often seen as a point of weakness and fragility, fear is an integral part of human nature and for the most part, cannot be destroyed, but merely conquered. Touching Bottom follows the female protagonist in her endeavors through her life in relation to her fear. A major variable in her life is swimming and being around water, as the story kicks off with her struggles in learning to swim. She undergoes a traumatizing experience with a leech at summer camp, leaving her paralyzed with a fear of murky water, and leeches specifically, a fear she carries on with her throughout her life. Forward to the protagonist as a married

Though our society has adapted and developed, inequality remains prevalent all around the world. Our society assigns value to human live based on ethnicity and gender. Currently around the world there are over 30 million slaves in which 60,000 are in the United States. Even though slavery has been abolished in nearly every country many people still measure the value of individuals in cents and dollars. Should life be calculated in terms of money? How should we as a society assign value to a persons life? I personally believe that you can't assign a price to someones life and you shouldn’t It’s both politically and morally unjust.

The modern age has been characterised by the evolution of “coercive shop floor practices” (Barley, Stephen R. & Kunda, Gideon 1992) into large corporations and the rise of “professionalisation of management” (Barley, Stephen R. & Kunda, Gideon 1992) which lead people to formulate a succession of managerial theories to understand and deal with current management issues, including the four models of management: the rational goal model, the internal process model, the human relations model and the open systems model.

Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect no matter of the timing of their death, which is the base of human values. Often times, we are afraid of speaking about death that we avoid the topic. As we grow older and we experience substantial loss, we start to come to the realization that we must also accept our own mortality. Dying with dignity is how we confront our own death and how we make our self-worth count. In many culture life and death are perceive as equally important. A person must be able to have autonomy, have their religious believes respected and die in a dignifying way that will not interact with their moral believes.

As society begins to advance technologically, nature is affected negatively by the advancement whether it be using vehicles that emit carbon dioxide or chemical warfare. Environmental ethics philosopher, Paul W. Taylor, argues in the article, “Respect for Nature,” that humans must respect nature. He believes that humanity should not only prioritize their needs but also consider the needs of plants and animals. Taylor believes plants and animals should be given, “legal rights,” to ensure protection of species (Taylor). Humans should not be superior to nature, and therefore must allow the safety of another species. Late Stanford University law professor William Baxter argues that decisions should be made towards the benefit of humanity in the article, “People or Penguins.” He claims that animals and plants that are of importance will be protected since it would be detrimental without a certain species. Baxter explains that having optimally clean air is beneficial because it will increase the health of humans as well as providing healthy animals for humanity. Nature must be protected, but only to an extent in which it benefits humanity.

In addition to religion, although it fits in with this topic, the traditional values seem to rule families today and continue to cause problems with not only the issue of sexuality, but gender as well. “The traditional american family values very often include: oppositions to pre-marital sex, same-sex marriage,  some elements of feminism,  abortion while actively supporting abstinence education, and separation of church and state; but these values include the beliefs in: Christian-based values,  traditional home-based roles for women, the males being the head-of-household, and programs and public policies that shield their children from exploitation,” (Taylor). It is obvious where conflict will arise when the values bluntly state that there is an opposition to same-sex marriage, but the additional conflict of religion will also contribute to more rising conflict.

Human nature is complicated. In our everyday society, it is not hard to see people hurt each other due to various reasons. Reminiscing history, genocide is perhaps one of the worst and tragic outcome of people hurting one another. In order to look at why people hurt each other and how genocide happens, we need to understand it from social psychologist perspective by analyzing methodology, person and the situation, subjective experience and application of the above issue.

Ideas about human nature are central to theorizing about politics because humans are the center of politics. Politics would not exist without human nature. One theory says that, something that humans are born with requires us to generally desire the company of other humans and thus a need for political structure is born. Once more than a few people inhabit an area, the desire for a functioning society kicks in and defines the rulers and the ruled. However, this viewpoint is not shared by all theorists. The disagreement in theories bring about the nature versus nurture, reason versus impulse, and naturally selfish verses naturally altruistic arguments which are key to understanding human nature.

Humans have the unique ability to describe their identity, select their values and set up their beliefs. All three of these directly persuade a person’s behavior. Values are our principles and guides. Morals and the values are the basis of human values. Just as a building has a foundation of concrete, the building of human values rests on morals and values. Human values can also be defined as the values of life. A good action performed today remains a good action forever. So, human values are the values of human being for the human beings and by the human beings.

The world and its economic systems been to, at an ever increasing rate.  Over thousands of years civilization have developed the means to master resources, such as, land, water and even the heavens. Agriculture allowed the human race to no longer rely on migrant herds of animals, but to settle and look to the ground beneath them for a continued supply of basic needs. Dale and Carter argue, “both civilization and the enjoyment of civilization rest on the surplus production by those who supply the necessities of life” (1955, p. 9).  Once that point in the creation of a society is reached, others are able to veer away from the trade agriculture, specializing in other pursuits valuable to a community.  Early examples of this scenario playing to its actors benefits include the Mesopotamians and Egyptians.

People often wonder what they would do if they found money lying on the ground. One might argue that a good person will do the right thing by handing the money over to the police. On the other hand, others say that the person should keep the money. Although this scenario is, of course, much more complex, it is a prime example of an ethical dilemma. However, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ solution to this dilemma because it depends on the person’s ethics and values.

Another function is socialisation, which is where you have the duty of teaching children the reception ways of conducting yourself in society.