Reflections on Value
The concept of value is gaining importance because of the present unwholesome condition of society where higher values are given scant recognition. At this juncture it is worth thinking about the concept of value, its different aspects and its relationship with man.
What is Value
Value is associated with what fulfils or has the capacity of fulfilling the needs of man, which might be physical, psychological or spiritual. The object that has the capacity of appeasing the hunger of man and nourishing his body is considered valuable as food. Certain objects possess the capacity to cure diseases, so they have medicinal value. There are certain rules and regulations meant for the moral growth of man, and they are moral values. So values always refer to human needs.
Intrinsic and Instrumental Values
Everything that possesses the capacity to directly fulfil some need of man is of intrinsic value. For instance, food has the capacity to nourish the body, and so it has intrinsic value. But money has only instrumental value, since it cannot directly appease hunger; but with it one can purchase the food one needs. A book is of instrumental value, and the ideas contained in it are of intrinsic value, since they enrich the personality, if properly assimilated. All religious traditions, customs, rituals etc., possess only instrumental value, whereas the spiritual elements contained in them have intrinsic value. Though it is obvious that intrinsic value is more important than instrumental value, the latter takes possession of the human mind, relegating the intrinsic value to a secondary position.
When people get morbidly attached to money and amass wealth, they lose sight of the fact that its value is merely instrumental. And there are people who go on accumulating books or reading them casually, without enriching their personality by assimilating the ideas contained in them. Similar is the case with religious observances too. People in general follow religious customs, rituals, etc. blindly without paying heed to the spiritual value behind them. As a result, these religious observances have no impact on their personality which remains unchanged throughout their life. Such people successfully reconcile, without any qualms, unrighteous living with righteous observances.
Sale Value and Real Value
External appearance and attractiveness of the object determine the sale value. On the other hand, its usefulness and durability refer to its real value. An object of little real value may sell well if it is made attractive by a beautiful cover and various methods of advertisement. A man may have many useful ideas, but be incapable of expressing them effectively, whereas another person may have ordinary ideas but may make them excellent by expressing them in beautiful language. This can be applied to the human personality too. There is a real man and an apparent man. What one is in reality, is different from what one appears to be. One may pose as highly moral and spiritual but may not be so in reality. The image that a man projects before the public is his sale value; what he actually is, is his real value. Many people try to project an excellent image of themselves to sell themselves, i.e. to gain social prominence. This market orientation has penetrated into every aspect of human life, degrading it into a saleable commodity. As a psychologist puts it, half of our
mental energy is spent in showing to people what we are not. The courage to be one's own natural self is quite a rare thing... Consciously or unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in a part and style approved by them.1
Life is Valuable
Life has a value. It is not accidental, having no purpose or aim. Many seem to think that life has no definite purpose and somehow we have to spend our life, utilising every opportunity of enjoying this world to the fullest extent. Swami Vivekananda says:
Is enjoyment the goal of life? Were it so, it would be a tremendous mistake to become a man at all.2
A psychologist, M.Scot Pect, says:
This feeling of being valuable is the cornerstone of self-discipline, because when one considers oneself valuable one will take care of oneself in all ways that are necessary.3
We try to keep and protect everything that is valuable; otherwise, we waste it. As long as money is valuable we keep it with all care, and the moment it is devalued we dispose it of. Similarly, if life is reduced to a meaningless non-entity, we waste it through morbid sense enjoyment, addiction to alcohol or such other aimless activities. This meaninglessness of life results in mental depression, and when it is acute, one commits suicide. When we do not value our own life, we do not value others' lives either and the result is an aggressive tendency which manifests itself in the form of violence, terrorism and wars.
Life is valuable for achieving some higher ideals, the highest of which is God-realization. God is the symbol of an ideal which we aspire to realize in our life. Everyone wants knowledge, and there is none, not even a stupid person, who hates knowledge. So God is regarded as omniscient. Similarly everyone wants to be strong and powerful, and none wants to be weak. So we say God is all-powerful or omnipotent. Even though I may not be perfectly truthful, I do not want others to tell a lie. So we all love truth, and the Absolute Truth is God. Our inner desire for happiness makes God all blissful. Thus God is the projection of personification of our inner ideal, and this ideal potentially exists in man as the tree exists in the seed. Just as the real purpose of a seed is to manifest the tree within, taking the help of other accessories, such as water etc., man's real purpose of life is to manifest this ideal God within, taking advantage of all the necessities that are provided in life. That is why Swami Vivekananda defines religion thus: 'Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man.' Some of the modern psychologists corroborate this fact. Victor E.Frankl says:
There is, in fact, a religious sense deeply rooted in each and every man's unconscious depths.4
Worldly Ideals
Worldly ideals such as acquiring wealth, power and position will not give real meaning to life, for they are less valuable than life itself. If we spend our life exclusively in the pursuit of such lower ideals, it is as good as parting with gold in exchange for baser material. Life is more valuable than anything in this world, since it is human life that gives value to everything. Swami Vivekananda says, 'Men are more valuable than all the wealth of the world.'5 So man will have a real sense of fulfilment when he pursues a spiritual ideal, which alone will give real meaning to life. And finding a definite meaning in life is indispensable
for our mental health. Carl Jung says, 'About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.'
There are five basic values which can be classified in a hierarchical order as follows: material, aesthetic, educational, ethical and spiritual.
Material Values
These refer to the basic needs of human beings such as food, shelter and security which are indispensable for human survival. Man cannot give his attention to higher pursuits of life as long as there is intense struggle to meet these basic needs. But meeting these basic needs should not become an end in itself; rather it should enable a man to move farther, controlling the desire for sense-gratification which generally takes hold of the entire mind of man after the basic needs are met. There is a psychological aspect of this material value. When the struggle for physical existence is minimized —after the basic necessities of life are met, the struggle for the existence of the ego becomes dominant. Just as a body needs food, shelter and security, so also the ego needs things of a different kind. Name, frame, appreciation, love, sympathy etc., are food for the ego. The ego tries to hold on to something for its existence; so we want power, position, money etc. Also, we try to protect our ego from all criticism. But when the ego matures sufficiently, it can stand by itself, without depending upon external food, shelter and security, drawing its sustenance from within—just as the full grown tree does not need to be watered or manured or hedged in for protection. Those who do not have any inner stuff desperately hanker for name frame, power, position, etc., and become very sensitive to criticism. When we are fully established in ourselves, we can get the solace and succour from within, since 'Each soul is potentially divine', as Swamiji says.
Aesthetic Value
Without the aesthetic sense, life becomes stale and insipid. There is a basic aesthetic sense in every human being, even though its manifestation may vary according to the cultural background. We are not satisfied with ordinary nutritious food; we want it to be tasty, and also want to eat it in a good ambience. We want our objects of daily use to be artistic, our house to be beautiful, and not just meet our basic needs. Even an ordinary villager living in a hut beautifies his dwelling in his own humble way. But this desire for beauty must be kept within reasonable limits. We should move on to the higher values.
Educational Value
This refers to the value of knowledge. Education is not the gathering of information, as Swami Vivekananda points out. Its objects is not to make a man a mere show-case of information or a moving encyclopedia, but the development of intellect and higher faculties. Education must endow a man with rational faculties, and make him analytical and introspective. The famous philosopher, Bertrand Russell, says, 'Education should have two objects: first, to give definite knowledge of reading and writing, language and mathematics and so on; secondly, to create those mental habits which enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgements of themselves.'
Nowadays psychologists speak of 'information overload', which is a psychological malady common among the younger generation. Enormous amounts of information are fed into the minds of people indiscriminately through different media. The famous author, Jeremy Rifkin, says,
As more and more information is beamed at us, less and less of it can be absorbed, retained and exploited. The rest accumulates as dissipated energy or waste. The build up of dissipated energy is really just social pollution, and it takes its toll in the increase in mental disorder of all kinds, just as physical waste eats away at our physical well-being.6
Ethical Value
The first three values refer to the individual. The fourth one refers to the individual's relationship with society. Man is not an island. There is interaction with the society at different levels. So peaceful existence in society requires proper adjustment and meaningful relationship with others, which naturally calls for some amount of self-sacrifice. That is why Swami Vivekananda says that there cannot be any morality without selflessness and renunciation. All the moral rules and regulations are meant for social unity and peaceful coexistence of individuals, as the saying goes: 'Good is that which makes for unity and evil is that which makes for separateness'.
Man is considered to be a moral animal, for the moral judgements of right and wrong are applicable to man alone. We do not try to judge the moral value of the acts of animals, since they are mere puppets of their own instincts, having no will to change their behaviour. But man has the capacity to do or not to do a particular thing, or to do it in a different way. Consequently, to be a real man one must be moral.
The moral sense is natural to man, having its source in the inner spiritual ideal, which always tries to express itself through every movement of human life; but it is hindered by mental and physical weaknesses. As health is a natural condition of the body, goodness is the natural condition of the human personality as a whole, and as medicine helps to restore the body to its original conditions of health, so also moral rules and regulations help a person establish his natural goodness. To be moral is to act in conformity with one's own nature, and immorality is conduct contrary to one's won nature.
There are two aspects of morality: the ethics of doing and the ethics of being. How one behaves externally while dealing with people, is ethics of doing, and what one is within is ethics of being. Due to fear of punishment or public opinion, one may conduct oneself morally, but internally one may be full of evil propensities, which will be waiting to erupt at the opportune moment. That is why, Leslie Stephen says: '... morality is internal. The moral law... has to be expressed in the form 'be this', not in the form 'do this'... the true moral law says 'hate not' instead of 'kill not'... the only mode of stating the moral law must be as a rule of character.' 7
Thus without inner transformation true morality cannot be cultivated in one's life, and this concept of inner transformation leads us to the next higher value, i.e. spiritual.
Spiritual Value
As stated above, morality has its basis in the spiritual core of man, forming the centre of his personality. The state when all the aspects of his personality are under the control of this centre, is called Moksha or freedom, which means not to be under the control of anything outside of oneself. Generally, this 'outside of oneself' refers to outside the physical frame of our personality. But by reflection we can come to the conclusion that the body and senses are outside man, for they can be controlled by man. The same argument holds good for different mental modifications too. So this 'I' which is the centre of one's personality is different from the body-mind complex, for the controller must be different from the
controlled. This spiritual centre is the real master of one's personality, and in the ideal state of freedom the master must establish his full control over the servants, i.e. desires, emotions, senses etc.
P.D. Ouspensky compares ordinary personality to a house where only servants are found without any master, and these servants act according to their own capricious thinking.8 One can very well imagine the chaotic condition of that house. Anarchy in a country will induce outside forces to enter and occupy it. Similarly, when there is chaos in a personality without any master to exert control, outside forces like money, power, position or some other person will rule over that personality, and this state is called bondage. Freedom from this bondage is Moksha, and this is the ultimate aim of human life.
References
1. Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1955.
2. CW. Vol. 4, p. 238.
3. The Road Less Travelled, Arrow Books Ltd., London, 1978, p. 23.
4. The Unconscious God, Hodder and Stoughton, 1977, p. 10.
5. C.W. Vol. 5, p. 83.
6. Entropy, Bantam Books, New York, 1981, p. 170.
7. Quoted in William Frankena, Ethics, New Delhi, Prentice Hall, 1982, p. 63.
8. In Search of Miraculous, Arkana Paperbacks, London, 1987, p. 60.
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