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MINDSPACE

W O RD FA CT O R Y

Are values and morals outdated concepts?

What role do values play today, ask many who are faced with corruption all around. A person would not
even survive today with the so-called values. Is it really a possible to do business without the bribery
in this country? Can a politician be honest, and still manages his election spending? Get real! Insider
trading, lobbying are the order of the day. But there are those who say that nevertheless, we cannot
give up on values. Both perspectives seem to hold some water. So should we have values or discard
them as old fashioned?
Perhaps the confusion can be removed by understanding ‘values’. Values are usually understood to
be some behavior patterns- telling the truth, being punctual and clean, not indulging in bribery and
corruption, and vegetarianism, for example.
Having values means giving value to something. Finding something important. How we know what is
important is by understanding the fact of life. Hence having values is being established in the fact of
life. So, to have value is to understand life. When our understanding of life is appropriate, we value the
right things. These correct values are known as higher values.
To have long values is to put the ascent on the wrong syllable, to consider non-essential as essential
here are some examples. At a physical level to consider look more important than health; to consider
money more important than work. As a mental level: to consider being love more important than being
loving. At the intellectual level: to consider gathering of information more important than wisdom and
clarity. At the moral able to consider what I get to be more important than what I become. At the special
level: to consider the robes, rituals and paraphernalia as more important than the goal of enlightenment,
moksha.
Adi Sankara says in Bhaja Govindam: “Nitya Anitya Viveka Vichara”-reflection and discrimination
of what is eternal and non-eternal; what is permanent and what is passing. Values are simply the
knowledge of what last and what passed away. When we value impermanent things, the result is
wrong, or more precisely, those are lower values. The more important things we value, the highest said
to be our values.
Money is no doubt a very useful thing. But its use is restricted to sense-objects. You can use money
to transact in sense-object. You can buy food not appetite. Bed, not sleep. That does not mean we
discard money. It simply means that we understand its worth. Giving it the right values means neither
exaggerating nor underestimating its worth.
Similarly, emotions-if we are reliant on the emotions of other, we subjugate ours live to the whims of
other. But if we can shower love, we stay independent of the weather of people. And so, too knowledge.
Information gathering never gave anybody knowledge. It is clearly knowledge that gives knowledge.
When you are able to map your current circumstance on the fact of life, you can make better decisions
& reach your goal faster. Values or facts of life are like maps that tell us ground realities. Yet many
people take them as suppositions and therein lies the fallacy.
Hence values are the values we give something based on our understanding of life. When we value
more lasting thing, it is called higher values. When we values impermanent things, it is called lower
values.

Terence Gomez
F.Y.B.Com (C)

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