Values are areas of our lives we have established as a result of real or imagined experiences. People generally feel a very strong emotional commitment to their values and values usually come into play when judging behavior in others, ourselves or our society. There are times when our own personal values may clash with the values and morals of others or the social values of the society in which we live. One such would be religion but we have already discussed that. What I learned from that is that people seem pretty rigged about their values and beliefs.
Values and morals are usually learned from others such as a parent or teacher. How many of us can remember hearing our parents or other adults say it was not ok to engage in sex before marriage? Many times the lessons were silent and we learned by watching the behavior of others. However, we still at times deviate from these learned values. Why do we do this? Where did we learn this from? When do we decide to make up our own minds and pick our OWN favorite football team? That is another topic entirely. While we are free to learn for ourselves we also come pre-programmed as a result of our up-bringing with a lot of our beliefs; be that of religion, philosophical or our sense of right and wrong. It would stand to reason that emotions such as remorse or guilt are learned responses or are they taught?
How many of us have disagreed with our parents beliefs on something only to find our lives not so dissimilar after all? It's pretty obvious that you can ask any number of questions on any subject and you will get such wide and varied responses. The question is: is it any wonder? I was once condemned for saying, "The truth is only what you convince others to believe." If we are to disagree on whatever; the existence of God, or the creation of the universe, pepsi or coke, then of course there can only be one truth and that truth is mine…… or yours…. if you can convince me ;)
Someone has to be right.
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