Human Values

Human Values

Human values: Values are beliefs that have an inherent worth in usefulness or importance to the holder," or "principles, standards, or qualities reflected worthwhile or desirable.” Values institute an important characteristic of self-concept and serve as supervisory principles for person. In literature, it is documented that values are so indissolubly woven into human language, thought and behaviour patterns that they have fascinated philosophers for millennia.

Human values are necessity in today’s society and business world. Human values are the features that guide people to take into account the human element when one interacts with other human. They have many positive characters that create bonds of humanity between people and thus have value for all human beings. They are strong positive feelings for the human essence of the other. 

These human values have the effect of bonding, comforting, reassuring and procuring serenity. Human values are the basis for any practical life within society. They build space for a drive, a movement towards one another, which leads to peace. In simple term, human values are described as universal and are shared by all human beings, whatever their religion, their nationality, their culture, and their personal history. By nature, they persuade consideration for others.

Common human values are as under:

Brotherhood, friendship, empathy, compassion, and love.

Openness, listening, welcoming, acceptance, recognition, and appreciation.

Honesty, fairness, loyalty, sharing, and solidarity.

Civility, respect, and consideration.

Honesty: Honesty is also vital human values. Presently, adopting an honest approach can often feel intimidating and impossible, but people fail to realize is that it is not the act of simply telling the truth that makes someone honest rather the quality of person who is being honest. An honest person is often straight, upright, sincere and fair and being an honest person brings more reward to the soul than the damage a lie could do.

Love: The presence of love in human life, the love they have for their families, friends, our faith and for themselves is important source of energy to lead smooth life.

Respect: Respect is a feeling of deep esteem for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

Faith: Faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

Beauty: Beauty is something that has really been spoiled by human society. The way we think about something that is beautiful is judged on a purely physical response, but the true meaning of beauty is being in balance and harmony with nature. Many researchers would argue that beauty is not a human value and, although beauty is a subjective experience, when they analyse what a subject of beauty is, it becomes anything that resonates with personal meaning, not just emotion. The prominence of this Human Value is clear when people think about the things that bring meaning into their life such as family and friends, these things become beautiful in a greater sense.

Trust: Trust can be understood in many ways, but finally it comes down to reliability and truth. Without trust, the world simply would not function.

Integrity: As a human value, integrity is imperative that people stand spiritually undivided and hold true to our integrity, the importance of which is often forgotten.

Wisdom: Wisdom is also significant human value in many ways; under-appreciated in its importance, in its value in our lives and in its true meaning. Wisdom is also very often confused with words like knowledge or intelligence but the word wisdom is defined as the quality of having experience and good judgment and the resulting soundness of that action or decision.

A value system is a continuing organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct along a continuum of importance. Therefore the importance of different values co-varies with the importance of others in the value system.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic value:

An intrinsic value is a value that one has of itself, independently of other things, including its context. An extrinsic value is a property that depends on a thing’s relationship with other things. Extrinsic value is the value, which depends on how much it generates intrinsic value.

The reason that things have extrinsic value is because they themselves lead to happiness or pleasure or they lead to a series of other things that eventually lead to happiness. Pleasure (Intrinsic Value) is the ultimate end to which all things of extrinsic value are the means.

Need of human values:

Value education is always essential to shape one’s life and to give one an opportunity of performing on the global stage. The need for value education among the parents, children, teachers etc, is constantly increasing as we continue to witness increasing violent activities, behavioural disorders and lack of unity in the society etc. Value education enables us to understand our needs and visualize our goals correctly and also indicate the direction for their fulfilment. It also helps remove our confusions and contradictions and enables us to rightly utilize the technological innovations.