A value is a mental group we've assigned in our mind, a bit like a "box" we've placed around something. It's always something we perceive, even if it's related to reality around us.
When people say they believe in values, they actually mean they believe in good values or in quality.
All ideas and thoughts use values:
- The values can sometimes be of tangible things or can be completely abstract (also known as "principles").
- Values driven by perceptions are considered qualities, while values that group things together are called quantity.
- We can mix-and-match values in innumerable combinations with other values to create every possible idea.
The power of those ideas in our minds heavily determines how certain we are of them, and our feelings are closely connected to that certainty. Those feelings directly structure how we interpret reality and what we must do, which creates a type of holistic feedback loop over time.
We use language to communicate those values back and forth, but we store those values as feeling-based stories in our brains that use language as a reference and trigger.
APPLICATION: Our feelings-based approach to values means we never find meaning in quantities unless we've assigned some special significance to the comparative aspect of those numbers with other numbers. Otherwise, all meaning is contained in quality.
Values are not reality, and are merely synthesized and processed adaptations of reality. They're abstract patterns that exist only in our minds as commentaries on reality. Things like "car", "relationship", "trust", "political system" do exist beyond our minds, but in some other form than we can perceive. The idea of "car" or "trust" as a fabrication is the one that's actually shared with other people.
APPLICATION: We can only determine if a value is real by constantly exposing it to the world around us, mostly through language but through all forms of creation.
APPLICATION: The smarter a person is, the more likely they will derive values that deviate from truth. While intelligence is a type of power, it's an inherent structural weakness, and part of why so many creative and brilliant people are also mentally ill.
All values are based on some form of authority that defines their existence, and we must trust that thing legitimately exists.
The easiest way to distinguish between what we have in our minds versus the world around us is to observe what other non-human animals perceive. If an animal (e.g., a dog or tarantula) can perceive it, it's more likely something in reality. Otherwise, it's a construct that's strictly human-made.
We use language to understand these values. By speaking or writing them, we can understand them more clearly. We gain power over the unknown simply by giving it a name.
We frequently define those values through something that broke from a pattern we were perceiving (e.g., a red line on a white piece of paper generates a story about a red line).
We presume these abstractions are reality because we frequently share parts of them with other people. We build them by combining our perceptions of reality with our previous understanding.
The perceptions we make are also made of values, so our minds are vast structures of clumps of values, one on top of another, assembled through associations through feelings and past understanding. They become less reliable the further we get from actual perceptions, which is easier in proportion to our intelligence.
While we can extract values indefinitely from an original experience, they're never entirely divorced from it. We always end up imagining the original thing we experienced as part of the abstraction. Thus, we always keep those values connected to an example, no matter how intelligent we are or how much we philosophize.
APPLICATION: Since we all understand values in a wobbly-pseudo-accurate state, the idea that values don't move around even while people do (i.e., Plato's assertion) is patently wrong. We can definitely become habituated to certain values, but that's only the illusion of consistency.
We understand values and ideas to the proportion of quality we can create with them. Effective teachers and popular depictions of an idea are demonstrating the most elegant understanding of something, since they've successfully communicated something elaborate in plain terms.
We only assemble values together when we have a purpose for it, which usually associates with or against something we love. We assemble values into new values, then treat those values as a base value for something else, and it can repeat as much as we need.
Further, we don't often consider how our values differ from reality. Our derived values never exist in reality beyond our minds. All that technically exists beyond the mind are the creations we build.
Values are inherently useless alone inside our thoughts (e.g., labels like "oceans" and "seas" don't exist beyond the mind), but are the framework for what we end up doing (e.g., we navigate ships by using labels like "oceans" and "seas").
Therefore, for values to be useful, they must fulfill several simultaneous criteria:
- Based on reality.
- Socially constructive.
- Immediate and controllable.
- Free of any general aspects that could lead to confusion or uncertainty.
APPLICATION: General ideas are generally useful, but not in a practical sense until we start testing them. However, specific ideas can create patterns across other domains, and are the foundation for how we make general ideas. For that reason, theory is never as effective as implementation, though it's longer-lasting (which is why teachers love theory and experts don't).
Most professional storytellers and comedians use associations with value to tremendous effect. By inserting an object at the right timing, they can evoke tremendous associations with a relatively small gesture.
This can get us into a ton of trouble if we're not careful, and is the source of many large-scale misuses of power. Beyond divine revelation, the only way to clarify values is through philosophically examining and analyzing them. Otherwise, we let our feelings define our values.
We use a specific process to develop and solidify our beliefs:
- Whether intentionally or passively, develop more certainty by discovering increasingly more values that reflect what we had believed.
- As we become more certain, we develop stronger feelings about it, sometimes even associating it with virtue.
- The stronger our feelings about that value, the more we combine and conflate it with other things.
- Even when we analyze to compensate for the stronger feelings, we will naturally keep adding emotional associations as the value is more intensely understood.
- As the values become more clear, they become a key part of our identity, thereby solidifying their presence in ourselves forever (since they'll become a past part of our identity if we change them later).
APPLICATION: If we live with only the values of things and not the things themselves, our existence is a defective pile of vaguely recognizable abstractions. The Stoics say this is a good way to live, but modern psychology has literally proven that it's not.
We build our values into a loose hierarchy, with some values holding more influence over our minds than others. At the top, we have religious devotion and addiction. At the bottom, we move into less-certain elements, extending out into further uncertainty into a formless void.
Whenever we change, our hierarchy is simply rearranging, but often because of the introduction of a new value or destruction of a well-established belief. This can frequently mean we discover, bury, or rebuild components of our personality.
Our desire for safety and the tremendous magnifying power of exponents mean some of the most powerful values we can hold are self-reinforced adverse ideas:
APPLICATION: The more powerful a value feels upon us, the more we're enslaved to it instead of thinking rationally. This isn't always bad, however, and is often how we can accomplish otherwise-impossible purposes.
Also, people can often manipulate the associations of values to other values to gain power. Many aspects of shame and taboo social structures come from this manipulation.
APPLICATION: We can control our values to the degree we understand them.
Since we assemble the values from preconceived beliefs, we must constantly reconsider anything we're sticking together that isn't directly related to the specific information we're convinced is true.
This, however, isn't easy, because values are notoriously difficult to define, for several reasons.
Firstly, since their very existence is bound by language, no individual value can exist alone in a vacuum. Each value has to have some connection to other values to make any sort of sense. For example, the value of "blue" can't be defined without at least "non-blue", and probably needs "color", "eye", and other values for it to be at all useful. "Color", then, would also need values defined for "light", "shading", and others. "Light" would need definitions for "lens" and "color". It never ends and eventually circles back on itself when "blue" becomes necessary to define something else.
Further, we tend to "flavor" our thoughts with experiences that associate with them. For example, if you were instructed to think of a random color for a bird, you're statistically more likely to think of a blue-colored bird because your experience dictates its association, and you'd be affected by the prior paragraph either way.
Second, since values only exist in our minds, they're difficult to communicate. We must find words to specially define nuances among various things, which is why people use trade-speak. But we also have to communicate information while we're constantly changing inwardly, learning, and making decisions. This doesn't even include the changes happening around us over time.
APPLICATION: We must slow down if someone else uses the same words as us but is concluding something irrational. They're probably using a different definition of that word than you.
Third, we make many associations beyond what we're consciously aware of. Our minds are incredibly elaborate, and one object will have connections with dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of other things. Those things all represent themselves in our conscious depending on a vast variety of conditions, including how we feel and the other associations around our recalled experience.
APPLICATION: We become more clear-headed when we more clearly focus our values. Everyone can benefit from 10 to 40 minutes a day of thinking about what they've learned and understood.
In short, abstracting a value would require it being unrelated to other values, without it moving around, with full awareness of what we feel and think about that value.
APPLICATION: Values are difficult things to take apart, mostly because of how much they connect to other values. As an average non-philosopher, it's more advantageous for us to be aware of many of our associations than it is to understand one specific thing as an extracted entity.
APPLICATION: Philosophers debate endlessly about where values come from, but we can still definitely assign patterns to consistent things in reality. I may or may not see the color "blue", and don't know where it is, but the sky and ocean are still "blue" things in whatever form we call it.