What Are Our Values?

Ignorance Matters!

Humans try to do things. It’s just the way most of us are. The sick and dying even try to do useful things with their last gasps. These efforts are pursued based upon personal value systems adopted mostly by example, or from teaching, and some from learning by experience. Not all people seek to do good, some try to accomplish values that are evil, and a few have no humanity. Even the worst humans seek to do something, usually something terrible.

Most try to do something good according to their acquired values. They learn, teach, protect, destroy, plant, harvast, use, conserve, build, demolish, imagine, create, listen, understand, guide, think, organize, help, lead, contribute, read, write, amuse, entertain, etc. Achievement of these worthwhile accomplishments has been tested over the millennia and this wisdom has been passed along by cultures in their legends, teachings, religions, artifacts, records and institutions. Many have been codified in laws and religious writings. A few things are still being tested and it has not yet been determined if in the long run they are useful and good, not helpful, or destructive and bad.

For instance, most agree that to do something for a sick or crippled person that aids them in a necessary task or reduces their pain and suffering, is a good value. Protecting, feeding or teaching children is considered a good value in every culture known to me. Many of the tested rules of life are written into religious texts; the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, The Golden Rule, and many others.

Some are verbal legends passed from one generation to the next or among the members of a community, and believed to be good. These for the most part are dubious, not having wisdom or being applicable to significantly large numbers of people in normal life circumstances; like running and hiding when law enforcement officials stop near you in your community, or refusing to stop your vehicle leading the police on long pursuits that always seem to end badly, or pregnant woman eating clay for nutritional benefit.

Here are some ignorant values, unwise behavior, and foolish practices that are too widely held, for instance:

Taking or accepting things you have not earned or are not owed, from outright theft to accepting entitlement benefits by deceitful eligibility;

Lying for personal gain or to avoid punishment for dishonest behavior;

Benefiting from someone else’s crime, like buying stolen merchandise;

Cheating for personal benefit, like insurance fraud;

Taking advantage of or terrorizing the weak, crippled or mental challenged, for hedonistic gratification, psychotic amusement or personal gain, like tormenting a retarded child or brutalizing a helpless animal;

Any kind of deceitful malice, like concealing your intent to do harm until your victim trusts you, ganging up on an incapable victim, continuing to damage an incapacitated victim;

Cheating associates, clients, customers and friends out of goods or services promised them, or misrepresenting the quality or quantity of goods or services provided;

Justifying or participating in criminal behavior because it benefits a weak family member, or harms someone demonized by your peers or community, or both;

Imposing your personal wants and needs on those unwilling to participate or unable to resist, like women, children or the mentally and emotionally incomplete;

Entitlement mentality, others owe me for slights, bigotry, discrimination, or embarrassments, visited upon me, my family, my ethnic group, my city or my country, and they need to be made to suffer like me, as though a similar wrong and more bigotry produces justice;

Or, being inconsiderate, impolite or rude without cause.

It’s probably true that some of these behaviors are considered acceptable in some culture or sub-culture somewhere. Many are acceptable in ethnic sub-cultures in this country. I believe these ignorant, self-esteem destroying, vulgar, cowardly behaviors are destroying our culture and our country and need to be stamped out by social recriminations, increased imprisonment, and massive educational reforms.