[MD] Values

[Ham Priday]

Hi SA --



> I think what your trying to imply here is that
> choice is ALWAYS involved, correct?  So, yesterday,
> when I said to a resident they can either go to their
> bedroom, go to the Time Out Area, or sit at the table
> up front and in either case the resident will conduct
> a consequence whether it is writing in their bedroom
> or at the table or going in the Time Out Area.  The
> resident was very elevated and explicit about not
> wanting to do either.  Choices yes, but not choices
> everybody wants.

Choice is always involved in what we do, but YOUR choice may not be what the 
resident wants, because he/she has a choice, too.  And it will be on that 
choice that the resident acts.  What you have illustrated by this example is 
the proprietary nature of value and the freedom to choose.  You can lay down 
a rule (law) which states that residents must at a certain time go to the 
Time Out area, or impose a curfew at, say, 9:00 P.M.  Laws and Morality are 
universally applicable.  They restrict the freedom to choose, and the 
incentive to obey them is avoiding punishment.  Not so, values.  I may want 
to read a book, you may want to walk in the woods, your resident may want to 
watch TV.

Setting a law may change one's behavior, but it won't change one's values. 
A person may be considered morally good because he does what he's "supposed 
to" -- obeys all laws and gives a share of his wealth to the poor, for 
example.  Being moral is behaving as one is supposed to, for the good of the 
society.  We can't judge values by a collective standard of what's good and 
not good.   Yet it's our choice of values that makes us what we are.  That's 
why, when an MoQer says something like socialism is a "high quality" idea, 
he's speaking from a moral perspective, not a valuistic one.  Quality 
implies what is universally good, whereas value reflects what one enjoys, 
desires or aspires to.  I maintain that it is a mistake to equate these 
human sensibilities.

Man cannot be truly free unless he acts on rational self-directed value, 
which is behavior that takes into account the well-being of his fellow man.

--Ham