Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
By engaging their imagination and sense of possibility of the ideal through
initiatives, such as shared community vision, people who are concerned with
social justice and the health of their environment can create an opportunity to
confirm a more positive and sustainable future. Imagination, as Albert Einstein
once noted, is more important than knowledge and is the most powerful tool for
social change. However, community imagination and any subsequent actions,
if they are to be healthy and productive, always proceed from a platform of val-
ues. Let's consider three categories of value: universal, cultural, and personal.
Universal Values
Universal (or archetypal) values reveal to us the human condition and inform
us of our place therein. Through universal values, we connect our individual
experiences with the rest of humanity (the collective unconscious) and the
cosmos. Here, the barriers of time and place and of language and culture dis-
appear in the ever-changing dance of life. Universal values must be experi-
enced; they cannot be comprehended. Can you, for example, know a sunset?
Fathom a drop of water? Translate a smile? Define love?
“Universal values are the timeless, unchanging desired of the human heart
brought to different cultures at various times and ways throughout history.
They remain ever at the center of human life, no matter where the hands of
time are pointing—past, present, or future.” 12 These are the truths of the human
condition toward which all people aspire (such as joy, unity, love, and peace).
Cultural Values
Cultural (or ethnic) values are those of the day and are socially agreed upon.
They are established to create and maintain social order in a particular time
and place and can be highly volatile. Cultural values concern ethics and
human notions of right and wrong, good or evil, in terms of customs, man-
ners, and religion.
In culture, and in legal systems, we see reflected the ideas and behaviors
that a society rewards or punishes according to their perceived alignment
to its values. Hence, cultural values are for an individual a mixed bag, espe-
cially in a highly complex society that has lost its sense of family, commu-
nity, and mythology. Today this is painfully apparent in the United States,
where the capitalistic market and technological innovations are increasingly
replacing the individual values of the simpler, more personally connected
lifestyle of generations past.
Personal Values
Personal values are constituted by the private meanings we bestow on those
concepts and experiences (such as marriage vows or spiritual teachings) that
are important to us personally. These meanings are in large part a result of
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