Do you have a set of core values?
Never have I stopped to articulate my values. They exist. That much is certain. Yet, asking me about them is guaranteed to elicit silence and confusion.
We entertain the idea that our values are ‘good’. How can we be sure of this? Perhaps our values exist only in essence, in our thoughts, and our actions provide contrary evidence. In that case, do those values even matter?
Existence ought to precede essence, right? How can I claim to hold a value, if my actions do not represent it? In those circumstances, why should my assertions hold any weight? It is easy to go without taking stock of our values, and avoid confronting our true nature as long as it remains ambiguous. Sure, this may create a great deal of cognitive discomfort, but we are blessed to live in an era where distractions are cheap, stimulating, and accessible. We can bottle up that discomfort until it festers into a wound in the soul or ignore it until we become too numb to even feel discomfort (or anything else).
And lastly, we are able to shatter this ambiguity. This seems to me the more jarring of the options. It would be much easier to live never recognizing this. Yet, like a mirror, once a crack forms - it is a matter of time until it shatters completely. I guess this is why we are so defensive when someone threatens our identity. We may not be ready or be unwilling to go through the imminent metamorphosis.
It remains to be seen whether this metamorphosis is fortunate or unfortunate for myself. And yet, I awoke in a ruin of identities.
Why is this interesting? If we look at Hume’s Bundle of the self, we are not a fixed self. In fact, we are a different person in every social interaction, and are almost a gestalt of our collective social influences, expectations, and experiences. And if the existence of my values fall in a similar pattern, what does self-improvement mean? Is it even possible to do so in isolation? Which seems to be the entire premise of an industry.
This is a weird post to begin the year with.