Our Values

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance --- urges quite appropriate to age seventeen --- prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven or fifty-seven.

The Best of Bill, pp. 52-53

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    I was under the impression that I was a rebel and that I needed no approval of those I thought of as above me. But, when I look into it, I can see that I was wrong. Even when that authority is invisible, I can see that I compared my values with an ideal based on nothing but an illusion of a higher good. Furthermore, when I looked to a guru or sponsor as an authority instead of a guide, my submission was counter-productive and, when that sponsor is gone, I am left in a spiritual void.


    Last night, 60 Minutes' program was about experiments begging the question, how young do babies adopt values. Do we start out with a blank slate, tabula raza? Or, are our ideas of right and wrong in our DNA from the start? Go to ( www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50135417n ). These experiments also showed how the problem with moral values is that they are a two-edged sword. They can compel us to do "good", or they can even be expressed as bigotry against perceived "others" and that positive values are local until a certain age. If we feed localized values restricted to family, social, political and religious institutions, we get the bigotry of a David Duke. Conversely, if we encourage universal values of a perceived "good", we get a Dali Lama.

    We can draw conclusions about nature or nurture from that if we wish; but, I believe it is more than a matter of which beast we feed. Bias, deep down in our DNA, might even have an evolutionary function to some degree on a primal level. But, once I am able to become an adult, I can see that my tribe is the human tribe. The ability to sort out these values is what makes us adults… loving-kindness transcends toward those which are moral values that are inclusive and not exclusive.

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