ON THE NECESSITY OF VALUES

Values as a necessary and also as a created experience is a basic and common aspect of the existence of rational organisms and their desire to survive and find meaning in the world that they happen to find themselves in. Everyone shares some values, but one can also say, that in general everyone has different values. Without organisms to value things then things have no value, because value is about necessity and desires and also meaning and things do not have a value in themselves independent of a necessity, desire or a meaning that may be attached to them. Even though values are connected to desire and meaning; material values like food and water are primary to all organisms and are a necessity. Other significant material values are sunlight, shelter, clothing, etc, but are less necessary than food and water, but make existence more bearable and enjoyable. The four main type of values that we encounter regularly are: moral values (moral virtues), material values, quality values (the quality of material things) and content value (the things that interest people; whether concrete or abstract that are valued). There are many other values I am sure beyond the four main one's, such as the conditions, states and emotions that certain things give us that are unique in that way that they do this for us. All people value and share some of the material values, but not necessarily some of the other values that have been mentioned. People who share more of the same types of values and things, have more of an affinity with each other than do people who share less alike values with each other. That we tend to get on well with and also have an affinity with the people that we share the same types of values, virtues, interests and ideals is obvious. We may value the same virtues as someone else, but not necessarily share the same virtues as them. We may value a virtue that someone else has that we don't have ourselves. Having values makes us have judgements about the things we value as well as the other things that are relative to the things that we value and this happens whether it is a moral, material, quality or content judgement etc. Factual judgements are different to judgements concerning the value of things. Judgements concerning the value of things are necessary, contingent and are also personal (subjective). Factual judgements are scientific, empirical, objective and impartial. Judgements of value can also contain a mixture between value and fact, such as the value of something due to its quality in regard to fact (i.e. the quality value of a piece of scientific equipment relative to another and so on). Considering that most values are personal and subjective to each individual apart from certain material values means that most values have no value in an objective and absolute sense, for example, the concept of God is something that is valued psychologically by some people as a concept that gives them hope, but it has no factual value because we cannot value it factually; we can't make a factual judgement on it (because it is a negative). We cannot prove, disprove or judge a negative. It does not matter whether people are theists, deists, atheist or agnostics; what matters is that we can all get on together with each other, just like people of different races should get on with each other or people of different sexual orientations as well, because we all have to share the same planet and we all have to interact with each other and also be happy following our own values and so on. People should not allow their own values as well as their judgements of other peoples values to cloud them from what is objectively real and knowable; our personal values should not be confused for objective and empirical truths.
We as human beings cannot escape values; for us, values are always there in all that we do. Ideals can be said to be the values of the highest kind that we can have. I have always considered truth, reason, honesty, beauty, goodness and love to be significant ideals to follow. There are many other ideals that I could have added to my list, but I will leave them to the imagination of my readers. Life is a dynamic process that is full of joy, pleasure, pain, struggle, suffering, reason and effort and so many other experiences. Values and lofty ideals add to the processes of life and enrich it and give it a long term meaning and purpose that has a value that is worth struggling for; for us and for future people. When following our ideals we may sometimes fail miserably and find ourselves behaving badly towards others, but what counts is that we can value our ideals and never quit thinking that our ideals will improve our lives and also the lives of those we know.
Values like justice, law, rights, democracy, egalitarianism, happiness for all people as well as compassion and mutual cooperation are what count for people generally. Sometimes people confuse values for objective truth or they allow there own values to get in the way of having respect for the values of others. A lot of the suffering in the world comes from the intolerence and unacceptance that some people have towards others or their values. Suffering also comes from the enforcement of one's will and values on others without proper reason or purpose beyond the need to repress or oppress others. If a person lived in a world without other people they would not suffer unless something went wrong, apart from this they would simply struggle through loneliness as well as the need to survive but they would not suffer at the hands of other people. Apart from necessary values there must be a reason for why we value things, otherwise there would be no reason for why we value some things in particular and not others; to say that we value things for no reason does not make any sense. All things happen and exist for a reason and can be analyzed; so therefore there is always a reason for why we value things and also there are always motives for why we do things and this is so even if these things seem trivial or are done out of whim. Most of our behaviour and motives in life depends upon our desires and values, our behaviour also depends on how we interpret situations by our choices and inner nature. A lot of the situations that we have been through in life are in a sense neutral situations, but it is we ourselves that either interprets it in a positive or negative light. Values tend to fulfil our inner and outer needs and wants to such a degree of importance that in our usual day to day activities we are hardly aware of them. Many objects that we encounter in our everyday lives also have a use-value to which we are so accustomed to using but rarely think about because of there general utility. It is not really in our nature in most cases to think about values in a sort of rational and analytical way in the sense of why do we have these particular values and not others, we usually just feel that they mean something to us and leave it unanswered. Human beings are capable of changing their values if they chose to do so and it is this which makes many errors and faults that some people have alterable, for instance, they could turn greed into moderation, hate into love, despair into hope, tragedy into humour and comedy, ignorance into awareness, etc. Ayn Rand claims that all morals and values are purely objective in nature; this sounds wrong! It is only material values which are objective in nature, but apart from material values how can you value something without being subjective? Most morals and values are objective and subjective in nature depending upon our individuality as well as the climate or time that one is living in. What is right or wrong in one generation or time is not the same as what is right or wrong in another generation of time; this is because morality is artificially imposed upon nature by humans and what is considered as right and wrong changes as peoples values change as they evolve over time as a species. It does follow that most people, if not all of them holds an ultimate or highest value which all other values are subordinated to, for some, it is his or her own life, for others it is the ideals that they follow and for others it is some other thing. But the mistake that Ayn Rand makes is that she claims that the highest value for all people is their own life and that this is an objective fact. All of our values can be viewed as a hierarchy in the order in which they can be placed, from the most important to the least important.