Basic values in people's lives. Life values - what are they
Every day we are faced with the need to solve some problems and circumstances that constantly test us for strength. And in today's world of all kinds of worries and stresses huge role play our life values, which are a kind of pointers on the path of life.
If everything we say and do corresponds to ours, life is correct and meaningful, and we ourselves are satisfied and confident in ourselves. However, it often happens that our actions are at odds with our deepest beliefs, which is why irritability. And this is an indicator that something is wrong. In addition, such feelings can make us unhappy, and only when we always act according to our conscience, both self-esteem and a state of happiness are preserved.
The life values of a person can be safely called his internal compass, by which it is necessary to check all steps. After all, when there are certain attitudes, it is much easier for a person to think over actions and, which is the basis of a productive and fulfilling life.
But let's think about what our values in life can be.
Human life values play a key role in his fate, because decision-making, the exercise of the right to choose, the fulfillment of life's purpose, and relationships with other people depend on them.
Each person has their own system life values, their priorities. Of course, everyone has values. But, for the most part, people are unaware of their values. And this should certainly be done in order, as they say, to make your life easier. After all, making any decision from the most insignificant to the fateful, one should turn to the system of one's values and then, it is quite possible, it will be possible to avoid painful doubts and worries.
Human life values- the basis of life choices of varying degrees of importance.
For some, material values are important: money, food, clothing, housing. For some, spiritual values are priority: spiritual search, disclosure and realization of one's life purpose, creative self-development, implementation of one's earthly mission. But there are so-called universal human values that are important for all people. Among these are the following:
1. Love for oneself (which has nothing to do with selfishness). Only self-love helps to show love towards other people.
2. Warm relationships with people on which our whole life is built.
3. A close loved one, a soul mate who occupies a special place in your heart. After all, only a couple living in love and harmony are able to realize themselves and leave a mark in life.
4. Creation of a home.
5. Love for children.
6. Love for the Motherland - the place where you were born and spent your childhood. This is one of the most important factors in the formation of personality.
7. Work or otherwise social activity... Of course, work is very important. But in modern world there was a catastrophic bias in her direction. Many people devote much more time to making money than to their own health, sports, raising children, creating a home all together.
8. Friends and associates. Communication with such people gives joy and self-confidence.
9. Rest. It is rest that allows us to find peace and balance, to concentrate on ourselves.
Have you ever wondered what is the most important thing in life for you? Each of us, answering it, will name personal desires and needs. For some, the main goal is a career, for others - power and position in society, for others, the family is at the head of the whole. And this is quite understandable, because everyone has their own life priorities.
However, we are rather interested in what this choice is connected with and what the individual is guided by in achieving the set goals. Let's figure out together what a person's life values are and how they are formed.
Briefly about the main thing: concepts and types
Speaking about what the term "life values" means, it is worth considering the individual scale for each person, through which he evaluates his life and chooses the further direction of his path. At various stages of development and formation of society, such a scale of measures and assessments has undergone changes. But at all times, certain parameters were present in it, which remain relevant to this day and are, so to speak, constant values.
A person's value system consists of absolute individual factors that are of great importance in a person's worldview and are the main guidelines in his activities. And those directions that will coincide with the life principles of a person will become priorities for him. The rest will be secondary.
Interested in what life values are and what they are in general, do not forget that this concept is complex. As a rule, the formed system of values of a mature person consists of three main “ingredients”. And this:
- General human values, conditioned by the concepts that exist in the human mind about what can be important and what is not worthy of attention (secondary).
- Cultural, formed on the basis of generally accepted norms about what is "good" and what is "bad", as well as characteristics cultural development and the educational environment.
- Individual (or personal) values are individual characteristics worldviews that are purely subjective for each individual person.
So, for example, all known values are divided into two large groups, depending on what their nature is: material and spiritual values. People who consider the first group to be the main are those for whom various material goods are priority, what can be owned (cars, apartments, jewelry, clothes, etc.). The second group is focused on people for whom spiritual concepts and human qualities, such as mercy, wisdom, freedom, knowledge, love, and others are more important.
Classifications of psychologists
The classification of values once proposed by Munsterberg makes it possible in psychology to divide the priorities of people into two types:
- Life, which include human feelings: love, happiness, joy, etc.
- Cultural values and norms that combine not only material, but also spiritual benefits, which are of great importance in culture.
At the same time, there is another classification of priority life concepts, in which the spheres of implementation of certain structures, as well as the degree of their spirituality, were taken as a basis. Thus, the following human values can be distinguished:
- Vital ones are human life and its quality, health, environmental and physical safety.
- Economic - favorable conditions for business development, an optimal environment for the production and promotion of products, the same rights for manufacturers.
- Social values - position in society, family and children, well-being, gender equality, individual independence, hard work, patience, career.
- Political - peace, patriotism, the ability to express civic position, independence.
- Moral values are love, justice, kindness, mutual respect, help, good breeding, honor, devotion, care.
- Religious - faith in God and salvation, the Bible, grace.
- Aesthetic values - inner balance, beauty, a sense of beauty, style.
- Moral values are the meaning of life, conscience, honesty, responsibility, determination, duty.
Spiritual people, the next type of people, are those who give preference to concepts and qualities of a non-material nature. And there is another type - spiritual materialists. These include individuals whose main vectors of development are directed simultaneously to both material and spiritual values.
The concept of "values" for all people on the planet has a different content, but at the same time they are associated with certain phenomena from the same spheres of life. The value system will only embody an individual sequence of priorities.
Conditional scale of life priorities
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1. Health. Perhaps, for many, this item will become the main factor, which is rated very highly. In turn, health can be attributed both to the category of spiritual and physical well-being, and to the category of social values. This is due to the fact that for many of us, various crises, failures and adverse situations are a significant indicator for assessing health status.
2. Family. This is one of the main values in human life. Despite the fact that there are those who refuse to create a family or have a child, as well as despite the promotion of same-sex marriage, caring for loved ones remains the main activity of many people on the planet.
What are family values? This is a concept that cannot exist separately from the family, because it means various rules, ideals, relics and memories that accumulate over the years and are passed on from generation to generation. And here you can give a lot of examples from life.
3. Success in various spheres of life and in life in general. With the development of a cultured society, prestigious education, a high position and decent earnings, universal recognition and position in society are becoming more and more priority. In this regard, success and promising self-realization are those values in life that are held in high esteem by the majority of the population.
4. Time. Time is considered by many to be an invaluable resource that cannot be bought, sold or traded. And those meaningful spiritual structures that build up over time often shape family values, experiences, and memories.
5. Finance (money). This is a very important point, which is highly appreciated by every second person, which is not at all surprising, given the economic situation in the world. For many, money is a means of a successful, happy existence, full-fledged development.
6. Leisure and travel opportunities. It is not surprising that many of us consider this item a priority for ourselves, because the opportunity to relax and travel not only brings invaluable experience, new knowledge and emotional relaxation, but also contributes to the box of family values.
Speaking about life values, you need to understand that they are an "inner beacon" to which every subsequent step and deed should lead us. And if reality does not correspond to the internal model of your world, this can be expressed in recurring problems, stressful situations and deteriorating health. When you set a specific goal for yourself and set your priorities correctly, you can gain self-confidence and become successful, and most importantly - happy person... Author: Elena Suvorova
For each of us, life values are a fundamental guideline in different types activities. They contribute to personal growth, the creation of a comfortable life, the formation creative thinking etc. Everything is achieved by a person thanks to the hierarchy of values he has built, which determines which of the priorities comes first. This is the measure of human happiness.
Some put the family in the first place, others do not think of their well-being without the third give them to interests and hobbies. Some representatives of humanity, giving up material goods, see their happiness only in spiritual self-improvement. In general, life values are goals and priorities that, controlling a person's life, determine his essence. The choice of fundamental landmarks is carried out by people depending on the level of development of their consciousness. However, either material should not be extreme, as this will inevitably lead to excessive materialization or, conversely, illusion. Therefore, it is very important to achieve balance in the system of life priorities.
There are universal human values that are equally important for all people. Each epoch sets its own system of priorities for the individual. In modern society, values include health, family, work and education. The implementation of priorities that are significant for a person is very important for his recognition and self-affirmation.
Starting to form in the family, life values in the future determine the image and their worldview. By analyzing them, you can determine scarcity or wealth. inner peace man, the variety of his interests and individuality. In the formation of a person's value attitudes, a significant role is played by his close environment (friends, family), religious beliefs as well as national and social traditions.
The main life lines can be divided into several groups:
- A family. Assumes long-term relationships (with parents, children, marriage partner, loved ones and friends) that are considered valuable. Thanks to the improvement of a person in a pair, his personal growth is more effective. And warm relationships with relatives allow you to feel the fullness of happiness.
- Career. It involves purposeful actions aimed at achieving a certain due to which new opportunities and spheres of influence open up for a person.
- Favourite buisness. Promotes the disclosure of the inner world of a person. With a reasonably built hierarchy of life guidelines, favourite hobby, hobbies and many other interests will contribute to strengthening the state of peace of mind and happiness.
- Money, comfort. An orderly life is viewed as a value that requires certain financial costs.
- Education. Improving professional skills contributes to personal development and represents a certain value. Thanks to the acquisition of certain knowledge and skills, high-quality and competent performance of work, career growth is possible.
- Health and beauty. Body values (a toned figure, developed muscles, well-groomed skin) are considered an important component of a healthy lifestyle that requires systematic exercise.
- Personal growth. It includes certain social and psychological skills that contribute to the formation of maturity in views, attention to people around, the manifestation of wisdom, control of your feelings and emotions.
Thus, life values are a person's way of self-assertion, regulating his behavior.
Human values are an extremely urgent issue. They are well known to all of us. But hardly anyone tried to define them clearly for themselves. Our article is dedicated to exactly this: awareness of modern values.
Definition
Value is what a person is consciously or unconsciously drawn to, what meets his needs. Of course, people are all different, which means that human values are also purely individual, but one way or another there are common moral guidelines: goodness, beauty, truth, happiness.
Positive and negative values of modern man
It is clear to everyone that it is normal to strive for happiness (eudaimonism) or pleasure (hedonism). Now this is even more understandable than, for example, 100 or 200 years ago. Despite the fact that office workers certainly get tired at work, life is now much easier than that of our grandparents. Russia is still shaken by various crises, but still these are not wars, not besieged Leningrad and other horrors that the mad twentieth century awarded history.
Our contemporary may well say, looking back at history: "I am tired of suffering, I want to enjoy." Of course, here he does not mean himself, but a person as a generic essence, embodied in different bodily shells from ancient times to the present day.
Therefore, the actual reality, perhaps more than all other historical realities, tunes him in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure (positive values of a person) and escape from suffering and pain (negative constants of his being). We have the joy (albeit of a very dubious quality) - to observe how the classical ethical triad "goodness, beauty, truth" gives way to such landmarks of human existence as money, success, happiness, pleasure. It is difficult to assemble them into some kind of structure, but if you try, then happiness and pleasure will definitely be at the top, money at the bottom, and everything else in between.
The time has come to talk about such a concept as "human value system".
Religious values
It is clear to sane people that the world is capitalist, i.e. one where money decides everything or almost everything is not eternal and not unique, and the order of values that is offered to them is not universal. Also, it is almost self-evident that the natural opposition is a religious interpretation of reality, which is subject to moral and spiritual laws. By the way, the eternal duality of being between its spiritual and material aspects does not allow a person to lose his humanistic essence. That is why the spiritual values of a person are so important for his moral self-preservation.
Christ as the initiator of a spiritual revolution
Why was Christ a revolutionary? He did a lot to deserve so much honorary title, but the main thing in the context of our article is that he said: "The latter will be the first, and the former will be the last."
Thus, he turned over the whole structure, which is called the "human value system". Before him (as now) it was believed that wealth, fame and other delights of a soulless life are just higher goals human existence. And the Messiah came and said to wealthy people: "It is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." And they thought that they had already bought everything for themselves, but no.
Jesus grieved them, and the poor, the unfortunate, and the disadvantaged had some kind of hope. Some of the readers who do not believe in paradise too much will say: "But can the goodness promised after death redeem the existing suffering in the earthly existence of man?" Dear reader, we completely agree with you. Future happiness is a weak consolation, but Christ gave the losers of this world hope and charged them with strength to fight against his unenviable fate. In other words, the values of a person, the values of an individual have become different and gained variability.
Vertical world
In addition, Christianity made the world vertical, i.e. all earthly values are now recognized as low and unimportant. The main thing is spiritual self-improvement and union with God. Of course, a person will still pay dearly for his spiritual aspirations in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, but all the same, the feat of Jesus is extremely significant even outside the religious context, because the prophet showed by sacrificing his life that other values are also possible in a person's life. which harmoniously add up to the system.
Variations of value systems
From the previous section it became clear that the system of human aspirations can be completely different. It all depends only on what it is focused on separate person or group. There is, for example, a sociological approach to this issue: the vertical of the meaningful is built from the highest to the lowest in accordance with the interests of the collective. The latter can mean both individual groups and society as a whole. And we know those periods when some peoples put the collective above the individual. This reasoning fits perfectly with the topic of "The values of man and society."
Customization
The individualized world has its own priorities and its own understanding of the higher and the lower. We can observe them in our contemporary reality: material well-being, personal happiness, more pleasure and less suffering. Obviously, this is a rough sketch of significant human landmarks, but one way or another, each of us gets into this picture. Ascetics are not enough now.
Formal and real values
If someone asks what role values play in a person's life, then this question is difficult to answer. It is one thing what a person says, and another thing what he does, i.e. the difference between formal and real semantic priorities. For example, in Russia, many consider themselves to be believers. Temples are being built. Soon, each courtyard will have its own church, so that devout people will not go far. But there is little sense in this, because, as the bishop from the third part of the movie "The Godfather" says to the protagonist of the film: "Christianity has surrounded man for 2,000 years, but it has not penetrated inside." In fact, most people perceive religious precepts as conditional and are not particularly interested in the problem of sin. It is also strange that, thinking about God, believers completely forget about their neighbors, i.e. human social values are in a sense in the corral. Naturally, in such a situation it is difficult to talk about true faith.
Pitirim Sorokin and his value periodization of cultures
The famous sociologist and public figure P. Sorokin based his typology of cultures on nothing other than values. He quite rightly believed that each culture has its own face, its own individuality, which stems from a guiding principle or idea. The scientist divided all cultures into three types.
- Idiational - when religious beliefs prevail over material goods and such a dominant attitude determines the values and norms of a person and culture as a whole. This is reflected in architecture, philosophy, literature, social ideals. For example, during the European Middle Ages, a saint, a hermit or an ascetic was considered the canon of man.
- Sensual type of culture. The most striking example is, of course, the Renaissance. Religious values are not just trampled, they are actually canceled. God begins to be perceived as a source of pleasure. Man becomes the measure of all things. Strangled in the Middle Ages, sensuality wants to reveal and express itself to the full extent of its capabilities. This is where the famous moral collisions of the Renaissance arise, when a significant cultural upsurge coexists with a fantastic moral decline.
- Idealistic or mixed style. In this model of culture, material and spiritual ideals and aspirations of a person find agreement, but the primacy of the latter over the former is affirmed. Orientation to high moral ideals helps a person to live the smallest in the material sense and believe in spiritual self-improvement.
In this construction of P. Sorokin there are no extremes of the two previous types, but there is also one significant drawback: it is impossible to find a real example of such a culture. We can only say that this is how people live who have found themselves in extremely difficult life circumstances (illness, poverty, natural disasters, poor quarters of countries around the world). Beggars and disabled people willingly have to minimize their bodily needs and keep a high moral ideal before their eyes. For them, this is an indispensable condition for survival and existence within a certain moral framework.
This is how the article turned out, in the focus of which were cultural values person. We hope that it will help the reader to understand this difficult and at the same time extremely interesting topic.
