Values: the good and the bad

(link below added and supports my thesis)

Values are comprised of the ideas and desires that motivate individuals and societies driven by the impulse of ideologies.   (discussion by Col. Wilkerson is appropriate to support my premise) It is difficult if not impossible for these ideas to mesh. More often than not the values of societies and the values of individuals collide. This happens because individual human beings are inherently moral entities knowing right from wrong when they see it. People in possession of both knowledge and compassion have the best chance of initiating a corrective influence on the amoral nature of society.  Cornel West is one such voice.

However governments and societies are inherently amoral or in some cases immoral making moral allegiances between government and the humans in that society virtually impossible and because morality is negated life in that society becomes like you see it when you look around the world today. Some men turn out to be the exception to the rule.  Col. Wilkerson is one of them.

There are societies values and there are human values. They are not the same.  I will explain by way of example. In Flint Michigan according to this NPR report. the government made a decision which resulted in poisoning a community in order to lower their operating costs.  The consequences resulting from the governments activities are still ongoing and the extent of the harm done to the citizens has not yet been revealed.  

I offer the example of Flint Michigan as a means of showing the dichotomy between the values of society and human values.  The Young Turks have addressed this problem head on.  Check out their reporting here.

What are human values?  Human values begin with the premise that you do not do to someone else what you do not want done to you.  If that sentiment sounds familiar it may be because it is a value that Jesus of Nazareth, Buddha and other spiritual teachers championed. Human values begin with that proposition and from that proposition can be extended into the entire spectrum of human relationships to a beneficial effect.

Subordinating the welfare of human beings to the 'bottom line' is a hallmark of the value system of many societies and governments. I offer Flint Michigan as an example, but not as an anomaly.  This emphasis on the bottom line over the needs of human beings is a characteristic of societies and governments.

The situation the human being finds him or herself in is referred to spiritually as the 'world'.  It is not a reference to the physical side of life primarily, but of revealing the disparity between the value system of society and the value system which is inherent in the human being.  

It's our ideas and dreams and hopes which give life its spiritual essence.  If this is true, and I believe it is, it indicates there are good spirits at work and evil spirits at work.   

Which one are you?

After finishing this little blog post I read the following article on the topic of the food allergy epidemic currently taking place. The article by Robyn O'brien "A Growing Epidemic: food allergies in America" reveals the same clash of moral imperatives that divide individual human morality from the anti-human socially imposed morality of the state.