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The Enchantment and Hard Work of Human Values

Values help us create love and peace, but require hard inner work.

In traditional societies, human values were taught to us by formalized religious education and our families. Parents and other elders would challenge us, correct us and inspire us to live by eternal human values, such as respect, kindness, honesty, compassion, to name a few. We were taught not to deceive, lie, cheat, break our word, etc. If we violated these, we were taught to make amends and apologize, or forgive whatever was needed to heal the relationship. As secularism grew, the role of formal religious education was reduced in society. And unfortunately, there is no universal manifesto for values (such as UN Sustainability Goals) that could be used in schools! Dinner table conversations and family gatherings became our schools for values. Religious education and teaching of morals — where it even exists- became “checklist religiosity”; it is focused on rituals and checklists only, e.g., communion, bar mitzvah’s, Ameens- finishing the Quran for a child, etc. The formality has been fulfilled, but the deeper messages may not. As the child grows up, their only source is to watch adults’ behavior and follow it, and with smaller nuclear families the adults are few and stressed themselves which means there is less time for calm and inspiring values conversations. Of course, pop culture plays a role in teaching human values. Movies…