Values i5
December 7, 2007

Value, in any form, requires an agent: a being able to connect a desire, importance or need to something. It's easy to extend the concept of value to life forms whom don't posses brains through anthropomorphism. A plant definitely needs light and water for survival and natural selection rewarded those whom "sought" out these things with continued existence. However, the plant does not have the capacity to value anything. Light and water are a requirements for it's life, but just as a time piece requires winding to be, they can not place a value on the requirements without a self.

In today's hurricane of political rhetoric, Family Values (Christian Values), surfaces more and more as the most decisive character requirement of our representatives. Naively many people believe Christian values is synonymous with goodness. Jesus' message of unconditional love to all, on the surface, sounds like a great way to answer all of the worlds problems in one great swoosh. But Mi casa Su casa requires everyone on the planet to willingly disown all of ones property, including the self: thus the "I live for Jesus" line. Conspicuously most Christians don't actually value losing their self or their property. Christ was a communist minus the guns plus one god. Christian values is paradoxally one of oppression: Submission to an invisible ruler, Selflessness, Complete passiveness, Unconditional love, and Unconditional forgiveness. Baaaaa...

Family values are the Christian zeitgeist system of censorship and control. The group is comfortable with certain behaviors and the flock places a great importance on not permitting anything that causes them to feel uncomfortable anywhere . If this rampant xenophobia stayed in the walls of the church it wouldn't be a problem for us Montagues who think the bible is as important to life as cheese wiz. Most Christians are comfortable with a husband and wife having 2.2 children, a white picket fence, per pressured public school prayer and a day dedicated to a god. The Sabbath day is dedicated to reinforcing dilutions and the children forged are into the carriers of the faiths torch.

I haven't frequently used the word value with a modifier because to do so would seem to diminish the value I and/or others place on other things. It would be inhuman for a person to claim that an individual was worthless to humanity because they didn't have a family nor valued the prospect of one. Unconditional dedication to a family that tortures oneself is a form of masochism, not a demonstration of righteousness. I'm sure the Human family argument could be used to combat the segregate nature of Family values but including all humans into a value structure shatters any semblance of order, especially when masochists and hedonists are essentially included in the whole of humanity. Christian values ultimately revolve around Christianity and it's current popular version. Even the Christians themselves don't mutually agree what Christian values are. Catholic values, Protestant values, Buddhist values, Jewish values, Muslim values etc. might as well be used in discourse. Whatever religious values a naturalist finds themselves immersed in, the common thread is a devotion to irrational beliefs and "right" behavior based on "divine" text.

"Social" is the humane modifier to use in conjunction with non property based values. All healthy individuals within a family or church value society but not all of society value the church or nuclear family. Society, as a continuing whole, values everything it produces that isn't destructive of itself: from grand gold sculptures of deities to poop porn. The majority valuing one thing does not diminish the value of an individual valuing an other. The Social values that have relevance in the context of Family values is public behavior and policy. Every healthy human being values the lack of aggression against oneself and therefore values public peace and the system that maintains it with the least amount of effort. There is a range of public behavior, thus a gradient of values, that consenting individuals are peacefully capable of executing. On the conservative side is full dress attire, such as the burka or Sunday dress; on the wild side is group sex on the beach while popping whippets. Very few communities would like to be at ether extreme of the social value system, thus the only fair way to set the bar is by direct democracy. Obviously the notion of Nation State prohibits the ability of having a community (town or city) set the bar. It's not surprising to find American voters are concerned primarily that the president be Christian. I presume that most naturalists value State leaders that aren't influenced by invisible dictators or ambiguous "holy" text but more so on rational principles. Social values revolve around equal treatment, personal rights and private freedoms, peace and fair social freedom.

What trumps even social values is life values. Every rational human on the planet realizes that we are symbiotic beings on this life covered planet. We value our existence, the billions of ancestors we had and the invisible hand of selection that enabled us to be. Knowing this implies a responsibility to our future descendants and the society that hopefully will exist. If we were to loss the wild space and the animals and plants that surrounds us, we would lose a majority of our identity. It's no secret that this grand tragedy of extinction and dwindling resources and landfill space is happening this very moment. A future society, without the buffer of the wilderness and it's unmatchable ability to balance the forces of life on the planet, would end up depressed in a bio dome destined for sterility of living and life. The Human family is far to big and the primary reason is that group identity, nation state or religious sect know that population is directly related to group power. If we as a species value intelligent life on planet earth we need to give the wilderness back to nature and not fear a sub billion world population. Society values culture and culture is found in towns and cities. Life values that animals have the freedom to roam and uncultivated plants get majority of the water and light.

The irony is that a couple that values an enormous family must place the highest value on the singles who want free love and a life without kids. That's the only way to be a species that doesn't kill it's self by making to much of it's self by achieving a balance. The intrinsic problem is that couples who value the big family usually do so not for the family but more for societal impact reasons. Our society truly depends on our children and their courage not let any group identity persuade them to not own themselves.