Natural Values

When we are thinking about our lives and what we hope them to be like, we have to think long-term if we are going to live them well. It is almost inevitable that both bad and good things will happen to us, and so if we hope for things always to be easy and pleasurable we are likely to be disappointed. Even if we succeed in that route, we will merely be drifting through our days on earth.
The solution to this is to seek to have a meaningful life. Meaning makes even the most difficult times bearable, and it fills our lives with a deep joy that does not depend upon the things that may happen to us. But a meaningful life must be chosen. This is because the very nature of meaning, like beauty and goodness, includes intentionality. For example, if we speak to someone, for him or her to understand we must choose to speak meaningful words. If we are listening to someone else speak we are most concerned about what that person means, what he or she intends to communicate. Our lives are like that as well. In order for our actions to be meaningful— and our life as a whole for that matter— we must act with a resolute intention. When people talk about “feeling that life is meaningless,” this is mostly a matter of their choices. What have they made of their lives?
But what kind of actions should we pursue? And how shall we structure our lives? Throughout the ages, and through most of American history for that matter, the way that people have answered that question is rather simple: live according to natural values.
This is very difficult to come to terms with today. As is well known, there have been times in history when people have used the idea of natural values to exploit others in politics and religion. Partly because of this, but also for other reasons, our society as a whole has rejected the natural values. Our media and entertainment largely disparages these values, and a general sense that life is meaningless and absurd is the theme of much of our television programming. Advertising continually and systematically attempts to draw our attention away from these values and toward the feelings that come from whatever is being sold. That is the world we all live in today– thank God for the exceptions to this rule that we encounter. But the problem of meaning for human life will not go away. If we reject natural values, we will sooner or later find ourselves wallowing in meaninglessness, and feeling like a victim.
What are the natural values? This is something that in part I have tried to answer on this site. They are rather obvious at a first glance but in fact they are very profound, and require much thought (in our world) to make sense of them and desire them. The most important ones are marriage, family, friends, religion, holidays and festivals, liberty, political union, love, country (city and state too), our history, learning, working, God, truth, beauty, goodness, character, nature, law, recreation, sport, the arts, and a few others.
Now clearly most of these are important to everyone. We need them just to manage our lives. Do we really understand them? And do we really desire and love these things more than cars, possessions in general, material prosperity, sex, food and drink, clothes, being “right,” entertainment, how we look, vacationing, and doing whatever we want? Just something to think about.
But all of the natural values have a certain radiance and power. As we structure our lives around them we drink in their power and joy. Whatever suffering we undergo becomes an opportunity to turn with greater fervor to these values. Our lives begin to have a meaningful core and a certain glory to them. We find the prospect of death not so terrible, because we have a consciousness that our lives will go on, and that who we are and the meaning that floods our souls will continue to be with us. And yes, in the long run living toward these values brings material prosperity.
One of the main ways we can access these values today is to begin to commit our lives above all to God (not necessarily religion) and seek to do and be what is good and right, trusting that God will take care of us in the way we most need. We must seek out the sources of meaning. We will then grow in strength and be able to pursue the values that in fact we desperately need, both here and hereafter. Much of the seeking involves gaining knowledge about the nature of these values, and the reasons why they are so precious.