Latest / Wanzology / Principles vs Values
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- Principles_vs_Values Shoobie-doo-bop, doo-boo-bop, I wanna love you. Shoobie-doo-bop, computer love. Just heard that song. What's going on? How you doing? You good? How your mama? She good? Auntie's good? Cousin's good? Welcome to another episode of Wanzology. I'm your host, The Wanz, silly as I wanna be. Thinking, been doing this a little while and still really haven't figured out what to call it. I mean, the title is Wanzology, but what do we call it? What do I think it is? Well, for me, it's therapy. Therapy in the sense that I am thinking on the fly of what I am talking about. I may not always make sense, but I usually make sense of what I'm thinking Today, I was pondering what's the difference between principles and values? There are those who live on principles. Truth, law, guideline, or moral rule that serves as the foundation for reasoning, belief, or conduct. And then there are those who live by values such as integrity, respect, responsibility, fairness, and compassion. Which do you think is more important? Is it better to live by principle or by values? For a while, I wasn't really sure. I wasn't really sure at all. I started picking up on principles early, early, early in recovery. What I heard was principles don't change. I also heard principles before personalities Values, now those can change. One person's value may not measure like another person's value. Integrity. Your idea of having integrity may be different than mine. How you convey respect, how you expect to be respected may be different from mine. Are those principles that you live by or values? Principles don't change. Kinda like gravity. Gravity is a principle, not just a good idea. It's the law, and it's very difficult to break that law. Need rockets or some kind of propulsion if you're a human, right? Everything that goes up sooner or later comes back down because gravity is constant. It's a law, a guideline that governs all life on Earth. Does it have integrity, respect? Does the principle have responsibility, fairness, compassion? See, these things are very, very, very objective. It's very easy to get these things confused and actually... What's the word I'm looking for? Hmm. Conflated. That's the word. They can be conflated. Principles and values can be conflated, and usually are all the time The fundamental truth isn't always fair. Compassion may not be a belief of yours. It may not be a moral rule to think that you have responsibility for somebody else But for some, these things are the same. I mean, for me, I don't have to care about anybody. I choose to care about somebody. It's part of my belief system. I believe that it feeds my integrity. I believe it's a foundation for my reasoning to be helpful, not just to people I know, but to people I don't know. It's a principle that I choose to live by I choose to live by the principle rigorous honesty. I choose to live by the principle what's good for me is also good for thee, so you can go first. Conduct, law, guideline, moral, reasoning, truth. These are principles, and they very, very, very rarely change. This is very different from a value. You can value a lot of things. You can value aspects of someone else's character. You can value how they conduct themselves. Can you trust them? Does that make you respect them more or less because they have high integrity in your eyes? Is it your responsibility how you conduct yourself or someone else's responsibility how you conduct yourself? Fairness. Everybody says it, life is not fair. But what does that mean? Fair, I assume, means balanced. There's good, there's bad, and in the middle is fair. Because sometimes things are good and sometimes things are bad. That's the simple way of thinking about it. But the timing of either one may or may not be fair depending on the circumstances the good happens or the bad happens. If something bad happens to someone that you think is a good person, is it really bad? If something really good happens to a person who's a total jerk, is that good? You see what I'm saying? These are values. Now, you can have both principles and values. You can have one or the other. One versus the other, I don't think that works at all. Because if you have a principle that you live by, like truth, you live on a fundamental understanding of what is true. The sun is up, therefore it is daytime. That is true for you. Now, if you work nights and you're trying to sleep during the day, yeah, the sun may be up, but you may not think very much of it. But it's still the truth What you believe may or may not be true versus what someone else believes. Think about it. You have Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism. I mean, religion is like this potpourri of we're afraid of it, so we're gonna worship it 'cause we don't understand it. That's the way it works sometimes. Primitive people used to worship lightning. They would worship solar eclipses. They would worship things that they could not understand or control, and what they believed formed the basis of their reasoning. So be careful. Be careful that you know the difference between what you believe is a principle and what you believe is a value. Your principles should never change If you live your life believing that all living things are God's creation, is it bad when you kill a mosquito or a horsefly or a hornet? Is that bad? In recovery, there's a part of the book that's called the first preposition. Either God is everything or God is nothing. Everybody's concept of God doesn't necessarily have to be the same, does it? There can be all kinds of gods, don't you think? There are, of course, the religious gods, but there are also trivial gods like gods of weather, gods of war, gods of peace, gods of spring, gods of winter. Which do you choose? Any one you want, that's what. So if you base yourself on a fundamental principle, what is it? You don't have to tell me. You're the one who has to know. And then from that principle, how do you measure yourself living up to the principle that you decided to live by? Well, that's where values come in. Your values dictate your behavior of what you believe and how you conduct yourself. Morals. Morals are supposed to be a principle. A moral principle might be no sex till marriage. That may not be a principle you want to live by, but it might be a principle your parents lived by. Does it make it right or wrong? Neither. Because you're different people. Different people with different levels of integrity, respect, responsibility, fairness, and compassion. Values that shape your personality and how you interact with other people Do you believe in cutting in the line to get in before somebody else? Do you believe that it's wrong to curse at an old lady? Do you believe that just because someone is having a heart attack in front of you doesn't mean that you have to help them? You signed on the dotted line to get yourself a credit card, but then decide not to pay the bill. What kind of a value is that? When you sign your name, you're responsible. It's an agreement. It's a contract. So be careful where you sign your name. It's a lot to think about. I think about little things like this all the time. Sometimes you're splitting one grain of rice so that you have two halves to make a whole, and that whole is you. You are one of the most diverse, complicated, hard to understand, hard to educate, hard to reason with creatures on this planet. Life is supposed to be simple, but as we all know, it's not that easy. If you wanted to simplify your life, my suggestion would be understand the difference between your principles that you want to live by and the values by which you measure those principles. You wanna be a standup guy or you wanna be a non-trusted gangsta thug? Do you want to be a respected member of society or do you want to be an outlaw, be selfish, not care about anybody else? It's up to you. For some, being of lesser character works. For others, there's just no way it could happen. We learn as we go to develop levels of integrity, respect, responsibility, fairness, and compassion. In my opinion, the very characteristics that make us human, they won't work unless they are based in a set of principles Do some thinking on this. Principles versus values. I think we all have both, but how we perceive each one is very important, very enlightening, very curious, and my God, very necessary. I think that's enough for this week. My head hurt. Your head hurt? My head hurt a little bit 'cause that was some thinking. Go out there and do some thinking, and I don't mean the stanking thinking, okay? Take care of each other. We're the only ones we got. I'll see you later. Peace.