The value of human life. Life as a value Can people live without values?

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As if buried under the rubble of so many universes, we ask ourselves: what is our glory, our hatred, our love? If we are destined to become an intangible point in the future, is it worth taking on the burden of existence?

Honore de Balzac "Shagreen Skin"

Does God exist?

Before we begin to search for an answer to this question, we need to understand the essence of the two possible options and the consequences arising from them.

(I’ll emphasize once again: in this chapter I only want to see what a negative answer to this question entails and what a positive answer entails. Which of them is true is not important to us for now, we’ll talk about that later.)

Logically speaking, God either exists or does not, and one option is fundamentally different from the other.

Option one: There is no God.

If there is no God, man is doomed to death. Like all other biological organisms, he must die, and his life, without hope of immortality, ends in the grave. Life is just a spark in endless darkness: it will appear, flicker and disappear forever. Compared to the infinite extent of time, the term human life- only a vanishingly brief moment, but that is all that is given to us here.

All people inevitably face what the theologian Paul Tillich calls the “threat of non-existence.” Although I know that I exist now, I also know that someday I will not exist, that I will die. This thought is stunning and fearful: just think - the person I call “I”, who is undoubtedly alive today, will one day cease to exist!

I vividly remember my father telling me as a child that someday I would die. I became unbearably scared. I started crying. (For some reason, this thought had never occurred to me before.) My father consoled me: they say, death is still far away, but somehow it didn’t matter. Sooner or later I will die, I will not exist, and this indisputable fact shocked me.

In the end, like everyone else, I simply got used to it. We all have to come to terms with the inevitable. But the childhood insight remains true: no matter how sooner or later it comes, the thought of death, the threat of non-existence should plunge us into horror. Human life is just an instant transition from nothing to nothing.

Everything dies on land and in the sea, But man is more severely condemned: He must know about the death sentence. Signed when he was born...

Death also awaits the Universe. Scientists tell us that the Universe is expanding, that everything in it is moving further and further apart. As it does this, it cools more and more, and its useful energy is depleted. Eventually all the stars will go out, and all matter will be compressed into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light, no heat, no life - only the corpses of extinct stars and galaxies, constantly scattering into the endless darkness and cold depths of space; ruins of the universe.

If there is no God, if our fate is predetermined and we live in anticipation of the inevitable death penalty, then isn’t our life absurd? Without God and immortality, it has neither a higher, final meaning, nor value, nor purpose. Let's look briefly at each of these three categories.

Supreme meaning

If the existence of every individual ceases with his death, what deepest meaning, what highest meaning can be attributed to his life? Does it really matter in the end whether he ever existed or not?

Of course, a person's life can be said to mean something if it influenced other lives or even the course of history. But this gives his life only relative, not absolute significance. Perhaps his life meant something in relation to other people and certain events. But these people and events themselves are of little significance in an absolute sense: after all, they, too, are sliding into oblivion. If history and all its events and characters are finite and therefore meaningless, then what ultimate meaning can influence them have?

The scientist's contribution to the progress of human knowledge; the doctor's struggle to relieve pain and suffering; the diplomat's efforts to establish peace on earth; the sacrifices of people of good will for the good of humanity - all this turns out to be for nothing. Ultimately, none of them change one iota. They can't the slightest degree to dispel the darkness and irreparability of the non-existence into which we all have to plunge. Therefore, our life is devoid of ultimate deep meaning, and everything we do is equally meaningless.

Let's look at this from a different perspective. Scientists say that the Universe arose as a result of the so-called “ Big Bang"about fifteen billion years ago. Let's assume for a moment that this explosion would never have happened and the Universe would never have existed. What would ultimately change from this? And if the Universe perishes, then what difference does it make whether it ever existed or not? Therefore, it is devoid of final, absolute meaning.

The same can be said about humanity. In a dying Universe, it is doomed. Since it will eventually disappear, it doesn't really matter whether it ever existed.

Humanity then means no more than a swarm of mosquitoes or a herd of pigs. The same blind man space process, which spit them out into the light, will eventually absorb them. That's the horror of the situation modern man: since nothing awaits him, he himself is nothing.

Moreover, for a person’s life to have meaning, immortality alone is not enough. Simply prolonging existence will not give meaning to that existence. Man and the Universe may exist forever, but without God determining and organizing their existence, they cannot claim ultimate significance. Such an eternal and devoid of explanation existence would, in some sense, be even worse than death.

Let me give you an example. I once read a science fiction story in which an astronaut crashed on a bare rock lost in space. He had two vials with him: one with poison. the other with an elixir that gives eternal life. Realizing the mess he was in, he drank the poison, but then, to his horror, he discovered that he had swallowed from the wrong bottle. He took the elixir of immortality and doomed himself to eternal existence, to life without any meaning and without end.

Consequently: for life to acquire true, lasting meaning, a person needs not just immortality. He also needs a universal Mind that would direct and organize this immortality and give it meaning. But without God there is none of this, and life has no higher things, of course! about the meaning.

Values ​​(good and evil)

(We are talking about eternal and absolute values, associated with the distinction between sin and virtue, with the awareness of the highest duty and inevitable responsibility.)

If every life ends in a grave, then what difference does it make to a person whether he lived like Hitler or like a saint? F. M. Dostoevsky expressed it this way. when there is no belief in immortality, then “everything is permitted.”

If so, then the writer Ayn Rand is absolutely right to extol the virtues of selfishness. Live exclusively for yourself - no one will hold you accountable. Life is too short to jeopardize it by acting beyond your own self-interest. It would be ridiculous to sacrifice anything for others.

But that's not all. For even with confidence in immortality, if there is no God, then there cannot be absolute standards of good and evil. Our life comes down to the bare and valueless fact of existence in an indifferent Universe. In a world devoid of God, the concept of morality loses its meaning. And if so, then it becomes impossible to call war and cruelty evil, and love and brotherhood good. Everything becomes relative. Who then has the right to say that you did good and I did bad? We don’t have comprehensive criteria for good and evil then!

Target

If at the end of life’s ordeals death awaits us with open arms, then why live at all? It turns out that human life has no higher purpose!

Many people think that at the end of the twentieth century, humanity is on the threshold of either nuclear disaster or world hunger. It is possible that we have already crossed the threshold, and are about to hear the news of our destruction: this time not from the prophets, but from the scientific intelligentsia.

Shortly before his death, Mao Zedong spoke with Henry Kissinger.

In the conversation, Mao outlined his cool analysis of the future: nuclear war will destroy most people on earth; The remnants of the Chinese proletariat will rise from the ashes and rule the world.

We must, however, ask: why do they need to survive? Does humanity have a purpose, or will it one day simply fade away, lost in an indifferent Universe?

This possibility was foreseen by the English writer Herbert Wells. The hero of his novel “The Time Machine” goes to the distant future: to find out the fate of humanity. He discovers there a dead earth, slightly overgrown with lichen and moss, running in orbit around a giant red sun. The only sounds are gusts of wind and the cold splash of the sea. Apart from these deathly sounds, silence reigned in the world. Silence? No, it is impossible to describe this eerie silence. All the sounds of life, the bleating of sheep, the voices of birds, the buzzing of insects, all the movement and bustle that surrounds us - all this is a thing of the past...

And the time traveler returns. But where? Just to an earlier point of the same aimless striving into nothingness.

When I first read Wells's book, I thought, “No, no! There can’t be such an end!” But if there is no God, this is how the end will be, whether we like it or not. In a universe without God, this is the reality. This reminds me of the fascinating lines of T.S. Eliot:

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

Not with a clap of thunder, but with a sob.

What is true of humanity as a whole is also true of each of us individually: we exist without purpose. Qualitatively, our life is no different from the life of a dog. I know this sounds harsh, but it's true. In the old days, the author of Ecclesiastes wrote about it this way:

The fate of the sons of men and the fate of animals is the same fate: as they die, so do these... Everything goes to one place; everything came from dust, and everything will return to dust.

A universe without a creator is a cosmic accident, an unforeseen explosion. And man is just a bastard of nature, an “error of evolution,” the result of the undirected movement of blind matter with the participation of time and chance. He is nothing more than a lump of mucus in which intelligence has developed, and his life has no more meaning than the life of any species of insect, for both are the result of the blind interaction of chance and necessity.

French specialist molecular biology Jacques Monod declared:

Chance is the only source of everything new, everything creative in the biosphere. Pure chance, exclusively chance, absolute but blind freedom - this is what lies at the root of the wonderful edifice of evolution, and this central concept of modern biology today is not just one hypothesis among other possible ones. .. The idea of ​​chance is the only one consistent with the facts of observation and experience. Man finally knows for sure that he is alone in the indifferent enormity of the Universe

One philosopher put it this way:

Human life is piled on an inhuman pedestal, and is doomed to flutter alone in the middle of a silent and brainless Universe.

We are then the result of the interaction of factors of heredity and environment; in other words, we are victims of genetic and environmental roulette.

Freudian psychologists assure us that our actions are the result of various repressed sexual tendencies. Sociologists like B.F. Skinner argue that our choices are determined by the conditions of our past life that our freedom is illusory. Biologists like Francis Crick consider humans to be electrochemical machines that can be controlled by changing the genetic code.

Be that as it may, without God the creator we become nothing more than a miscarriage of nature, thrown out into a purposeless universe for a purposeless life.

It seems to me that the following expressive words of the outstanding physicist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Steven Weinberg can serve as a good description of the hardships of modern man. These are the ends of his acclaimed book “The First Three Minutes”:

No matter how all these problems are solved, and no matter what cosmological model turns out to be correct. There is little comfort in all this. People are almost unable to give up the belief that we are in some special relationship with the Universe, that human life is not just some farcical outcome of a chain random events, going back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built into the Universe from the beginning. I'm writing this on a plane thirty thousand feet above Wyoming on the way from San Francisco to Boston. The land below looks very soft and cozy - fluffy clouds here and there, snow turning pink in the rays of the sunset, roads crossing the area from one town to another. It is very difficult to realize that all this is just a tiny part of a stunningly hostile Universe. It is even more difficult to realize that this the present Universe has evolved from an early state unimaginably alien to us, and that it faces death from eternal cold or unbearable heat. The more comprehensible the Universe appears, the more meaningless it seems.

But if there is no consolation in the fruits of our research, at least to some extent the search itself provides it. People are not inclined to lull themselves into tales of gods and giants or to become isolated in their thoughts in everyday affairs; they build telescopes, satellites and accelerators; they sit for endless hours at desks, making sense of the data they collect. Trying to understand the Universe is one of the things that slightly raises human life above the level of farce and give it the features of a high tragedy

The pathos of these words requires no comment. Banish God from the Universe, and Weinberg will be absolutely right. Human genius, in the grip of a life that has no higher meaning, no value, no purpose, only makes man's situation more tragic. There is little comfort in this.

I hope you are beginning to understand the gravity of the choice before us. As one said modern writer: “If God is dead, man is also dead.” This is why the question of the existence of God is so vitally important for man.

Someone might say: “Well, then all that’s left is to just live.” The trouble, however, is that a person cannot live by consistently pursuing the principle of atheism.

"And we? - atheists will ask. “We live somehow!”

Of course. And I don't blame you for not living, or for not being atheists. My reproach to you is inconsistency.

Francis Shafer explained this well. Modern man, according to Shafer, lives in a “two-story” Universe. The lower floor is a finite world without God, where life is absurd. An unbeliever lives in the lower floor because he believes that there is no God. In the upper floor there is God, and with Him the meaning, values ​​and purpose of existence.

Man’s problem is that he cannot bear to live on the ground floor, where life is absurd. Therefore, he constantly jumps to the second floor and steals meaning, values ​​and purpose from there. But he has no right to such behavior - it is completely inconsistent. Because these values ​​do not exist without God, and the person from the bottom floor does not have God.

Let us again touch upon three areas in which life without God seemed incomplete to us, and see whether modern man is capable of living by consistently denying God.

Living without a higher meaning?

Without God, life has no meaning, but even those philosophers who have realized this continue to live as if there is this meaning.

Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, believed that a person can give meaning to his life by free choice a certain course of action. (Sartre chose Marxism)

But such a program is completely inconsistent. You cannot say that life is absurd and then, without taking a breath, assert that a person can give it meaning. A person locked in the lower floor, where life is absurd, cannot jump to the floor above - where life has meaning. This will no longer be his life, but someone else’s. For a person who does not have God, the meaning of life will not come from anywhere.

An exercise in self-deception is what Sartre really offers us. Isn't it obvious that the universe either has meaning or it doesn't? And just because I attribute this meaning to her, it will not appear to her. After all, it may turn out that I attribute one meaning to her, and you another. Who is right? Of course, neither you nor I. A universe without meaning remains meaningless no matter how you look at it, just as the Earth will remain round no matter how much I claim it is flat. In fact, Sartre speaks. "Let's pretend the universe makes sense."

Living without values?

This is where the inconsistency is most obvious. First, atheists, having refuted God, continue to adhere to the values ​​of love and brotherhood. Albert Camus was rightly criticized for believing both in the absurdity of life and in the ethic of love and brotherhood between people. These two things are logically incompatible.

Bertrand Russell was guilty of the same inconsistency. Being an atheist, he was also a zealous critic of social relations, denounced war, etc.

To deny the existence of God means to deny the existence of absolute good and evil. A person living on the ground floor is obliged to come to the logical conclusion that “everything is permitted,” in the words of Dostoevsky. But Dostoevsky showed that a person cannot live with such views. In his novel Crime and Punishment, a young atheist brutally kills an old woman. He knows that, according to his theories, he shouldn't feel guilty. However, the feeling of guilt wears on him until he confesses and surrenders his life to God.

In another Dostoevsky masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, Smerdyakov kills his father after believing Ivan that there is no God or absolute values. Then he accuses Ivan himself of this murder: after all, it was he who said that there is no God. Unable to accept the logical conclusions of his own worldview, Ivan ends up with “delirium tremens.”

A person cannot live without values. He can't imagine. that soldiers have every right to kill innocent children, that it is natural for dictatorial regimes to torture political prisoners, that it is perfectly acceptable when a man like Idi Amin mercilessly exterminates thousands of his compatriots. Everything in a person cries out that such actions are evil - truly evil. But if there is no God, then there is neither evil nor virtue! And yet a person appeals to values, not noticing that he has entered the realm of faith. Doesn't this behavior indicate that a world devoid of God is missing something very important?

Secondly: if there is neither God nor immortality, then many atrocities will remain unpunished, and heroic victims will remain without reward.

The English theologian Cardinal Newman once said that if he did not believe that in the afterlife all the atrocities of human history would be avenged, he would go crazy. And he can be understood. It is intolerable to find ourselves in a universe in which moral responsibility and moral values ​​are absent. Therefore, it is hardly possible to find an atheist who would live in full accordance with his ideas, thought out to the end.

But, aware of the transience of life,

He lives like this - in spite of everything -

It's like living forever

And this world belongs to him.

Living without a goal?

Most people who deny the presence of a goal in life still live happily - either by inventing some kind of goal for themselves (which, as we see in the example of Sartre, comes down to self-deception), or without making final logical conclusions from their views.

Take, for example, the problem of death. According to Ernst Bloch, a modern non-believer survives under the threat of death - subconsciously borrowing his ancestor's belief in immortality, although he himself has no right to such a belief. As Bloch notes, the belief that life ends in nothing is hardly “enough to hold your head high and work as if there were no end.” Borrowing from their ancestors scraps of faith in immortality, writes Bloch, modern man does not feel the abyss that constantly surrounds him and which will ultimately inevitably swallow him. Thanks to these scraps, he retains a sense of his own personality. Thanks to them, the impression arises that a person does not die, but simply in one fine day the world ceases to appear to him. Thus, this “courage” feeds on someone else’s expense. It lives on past hopes and the support that they once provided

But a person no longer has the right to this support if he rejects God. However, in order not to live aimlessly, he jumps to the top floor and drags the purpose of life from there.

Those who reason something like this find themselves in exactly the same position: “Neither the Universe nor humanity has a purpose for existence, this is true. But there is a reason for existence. This reason is chance." However, is there much joy in living in an impersonal universe ruled by blind chance? And it ends up that these people begin to attribute personal qualities and motives themselves physical processes. Such a leap one floor above gives rise to a rather unexpected manner of expression.

For example, the outstanding Soviet physicists Zeldovich and Novikov, reflecting on the properties of the Universe, ask the question: why did Nature create just such a Universe and not another? This is strange to hear, especially from Soviet scientists.

Nature, apparently, replaces God here and plays His role.

Francis Crick also capitalizes the word “Nature” and talks about natural selection as an “intelligent” process thinking what to do.

English astronomer Fred Hoyle attributes divine qualities to the Universe itself.

Living without God?

Although all these people deny the existence of God, they smuggle in some substitute for God because they are sick of living in a universe where everything is a random result of impersonal forces. It's funny to watch them back away from their views in the face of the ultimate logical conclusions that follow from them.

For example, women's rights activists are raising a storm of protest about Freud's sexual psychology, accusing it of chauvinism and humiliation of women. Some psychologists cannot withstand the pressure and revise their theories.

But where is their logic? If Freudian psychology is indeed true, its demeaning nature to women should not matter at all. We cannot change the truth just because we don’t like where it leads. But people cannot lead consistent and happy lives in a world where other people are devalued.

The only way to consistently advocate for women's rights is if God exists. For if there is no God, then no one has value. Moreover, according to the installation natural selection, male biological species has the characteristics of dominance and aggressiveness, and a woman has no more “rights” than a goat or chicken. In nature, what exists is correct.

But who can live with such views? Apparently, even Freudians cannot do this.

Let's remember sociological behaviorism - the teachings of B.F. Skinner. His views lead to a society similar to that described by George Orwell in

the novel "1984", where the government controls and programs the thoughts of everyone. Pavlov's dogs could be trained to salivate when called, and the same is possible in relation to people. If there is no God, and Skinner's theories are correct, then there can be no moral objection to treating people like rats in Skinner's box, where they run through their mazes, lured by food and driven by electric shocks. According to Skinner, all our actions are still predetermined. A person is not qualitatively different from a mole, since both are just matter combined with time and chance.

How can one live with such inhumane views?

Or, finally, take the biological determinism of such a scientist as Francis Crick. Logic leads to the conclusion that man is no better than any laboratory exhibit. The world was horrified to learn about camps like Dachau, where the Nazis used prisoners for medical experiments. But why be horrified? If there is no God, then what reason is there to object to the use of people as guinea pigs?

On memorial complex There is an inscription in Dachau. “Nie wieder” “This should not happen again!” - but similar things do happen. It was recently discovered that medical scientists in the United States injected several people with a sterilizing drug without their knowledge or consent. From here there is a direct path to demographic control, during which weak and undesirable individuals are destroyed, giving way to strong ones. Shouldn't we say that it is unacceptable that man is not just an electrochemical device? But: we can only protest if God exists.

Now do you see why - if God is dead, man is also dead? Man fails to consistently live up to the view that life is ultimately devoid of meaning, value, and purpose.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the great German atheist of the nineteenth century, who proclaimed the “death of God,” recognized that for a consistent and happy life an atheist needs to be a “superman” - a kind of mythical, superhuman ideal, which no one, including Nietzsche himself, has been able to achieve and will not be able to achieve. The finite world itself is hardly sufficient for a reasonably happy life.

Option two: God exists

This is the position of biblical Christianity.

The reader may ask - why, in fact, were we talking about Christianity, and not about any other religion that similarly recognizes the existence of God?

The answer to this is simple. In this book I share with you the truths that I personally have found. My search has led me to the conviction that the Bible (consisting of the Old and New Testaments) and the Christianity based on it are the truth. Of course, the reader has the right to turn to other books and compare the point of view of other authors with mine. My job for now is just to introduce you to the alternative to atheism - not the only possible one, but (in the author’s opinion) the only true one.

What has been said does not mean that absolutely everything in non-Christian religions is false. No, any teaching may contain grains of truth or even profound discoveries. For example, I found the arguments presented in the next chapter from medieval Muslim thinkers. However, I found the revelation of God precisely in the Bible. Therefore, in order not to waste time, we will turn to it.

According to the Bible, God exists, and human life does not end with the grave. God has endowed us with a soul, which, reunited with the resurrected body, will live forever. (All people are immortal in their own way, but some will inherit eternal life and others eternal destruction.) Thus, biblical Christianity recognizes two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable and purposeful life: God and immortality.

Let us now briefly touch upon the biblical solution to the problem for each of these three areas.

Supreme meaning

A person does not cease to exist when he physically dies. Therefore, the choices he made during his lifetime have real and eternal significance. According to the Bible, man has a freedom undreamed of by any existentialists: the freedom to determine his own eternal destiny. (God offers us forgiveness. And how we respond to this offer during life will determine our fate after death.)

In this case, a person gains not only eternal existence. That fact. that he is created in the image of God Himself gives man special significance.

As a limited material being, he, like the rest of the Universe, is qualitatively different from the infinite, unlimited God (see list on the left).

But as a self-aware individual, man is like God and qualitatively different from the rest of creation

If man is created in the image of God, then one human being is more valuable than the entire material universe. This is how biblical Christianity sees significance and purpose in human existence.

Values ​​(good and evil)

Since life does not end with the grave, a person cannot escape responsibility for his actions. Evil will be punished, good will be rewarded. Eventually, the scales of God's justice will be balanced. Every evil act committed in the universe will be punished. (But Jesus Christ takes the punishment for the sins of those who believe in Him.) Since God will judge the world, our actions have real moral value

Moreover, if God exists, then there are absolute criteria of good and evil. Then the Ten Commandments are an expression of the moral nature of God Himself. Holiness and goodness, contained in the nature of God, are the absolute standard by which all actions are measured. Therefore, we can rightfully consider selfishness, war, hatred and oppression to be true evils. This is how biblical Christianity reveals values ​​in life.

Target

Since a person receives the gift of immortality, he does not live simply to die. God created us for a specific purpose: to become His children. I really like the words of the catechism: “What is the main goal of man? To love God and rejoice in Him forever.” Our final destination is not the damp earth, but the sky.

Moreover: man and the Universe are not the fruit of blind chance. God conceived us from eternity, when the Universe did not yet exist, and only He existed. Christ himself knew even before the existence of the Universe that he would take human form and die on the cross in order to save people, then not yet created. Thus, man and the Universe are not accidental, but embody the eternal purposes of God. And we, His children, are allowed to join Him in achieving these goals. Thus our life is filled forever meaningful goal.

The very first results

So biblical Christianity tells us that life has meaning, value, and purpose. And a person can live his life consistently and happily. Biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism fails. (Thought out to its logical conclusion, it only leads to despair.)

Let us not forget that we have not yet proven the truth of Christianity. We just looked at what options are possible.

If there is no God, life is aimless and absurd. If the God of the Bible exists, then the conditions for a meaningful life are provided. Only the second option allows a person to be both happy and consistent.

Let's make a preliminary conclusion: not yet knowing whether God exists or not, we see that His existence is desirable.

Therefore, even if the arguments in favor of these two alternatives were absolutely equivalent, man of sense I must, it seems to me, choose the second and admit the existence of God.

True, some atheists, like Anthony Flew, like to talk about the “presumption of atheism” - i.e. that in case of equally probable options it should be assumed that there is no God.

But in light of what has been said above, this seems to me complete nonsense. First, there is a logical fallacy here. Atheism is the same claim to some kind of knowledge (“There is no God”), as is theism (“God exists”). Therefore, on equal evidence, he cannot claim the presumption. At best, we can talk about the “presumption of agnosticism” (“Maybe. God exists, but maybe not”).

Secondly, is it not wiser, on equal evidence, to choose the view that gives life and the universe meaning, value and purpose, and which can therefore be consistently held! Given the equal probability of these two options, why choose death, futility and destruction? Therefore, I am inclined to talk about the “presumption of theism.” Blaise Pascal also showed that we have practically nothing to lose, and we can gain infinitely much.

But at the same time, I do not at all believe that the scales are in complete balance. In my opinion, there is sufficient reason to believe that the existence of God is not only desirable, but also very probable in the light of logic and scientific facts. Let's look at some of these reasons.

What is the most important thing in life for you? And if you ask this question different people, you will probably get different answers. I would immediately say freedom and development. One of my best friends replied that the most important things in life for him were family and health. You will have your answer. All you need to understand is that what is important to you controls your actions. Depending on what your priorities are, your life will be structured. And in this article I would like to talk about the formation of a system of life values, because... I think this is a very important point in the process

Why is the value system so important for every person?

It is important to understand that the presence of a system of value orientations already indicates a mature personality. Personal values ​​determine our internal readiness to perform certain activities and indicate the direction of our development. To say more in simple words, then the system of values ​​for a person is a certain vector of his development. The value world of every person is vast. However, there are certain “basic” values ​​that determine activities in the main ones.

Life values ​​do not arise overnight. They are the result of our life experiences. Significant events in our lives, books, films, teachers, etc. play a huge role in this. Life values ​​can change over time. There is nothing more permanent than temporary. At 15 you have one set of values, at 30 you have different values. Each person's values ​​are individual, like fingerprints. The coincidence of the main life values ​​strengthens relationships between people, which is very important in modern society.

Understanding your main life values ​​is a very important thing. If you live a long and difficult life, and at the end you understand that such a life was not interesting, then it will be too late to change anything... If, on the contrary, you know well what you want from life, what is truly for you dear, every day of your well-structured life will be filled with meaning.

2 types of life values ​​and 3 types of people

In general, there are a large number of values, but all of them can be divided into two large groups: material and spiritual.

- We can include material assets: an apartment, a car, a garage, jewelry, books, musical instruments, sports equipment, food, clothes, etc.;

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- to the spiritual: active life, life wisdom, love, responsibility, beauty, mercy, justice, self-improvement, freedom, beauty, health, knowledge, etc.

Depending on the created value system, each person can be classified into one of 3 groups:
- materialists;
- spiritual people;
- spiritual materialists.

I wonder which group you belong to?! Now stop reading for a minute and think. In which direction are your main development vectors directed? Toward the material? Or maybe towards the spiritual? Or both! Personally, I belong to the 3rd group. I am a spiritual materialist. But 5 years ago I was an inveterate materialist. Understanding the 7 areas of life helped me become more balanced and start living.

The value system of modern man, unfortunately, is similar to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which is skewed in one direction. Where to, you ask? Towards material values. Everyone simply froze in materiality, like blocks of stone. You can touch, see, buy material values, and they all depend on the time in which a person lives. For example, 300 years ago there were no cars and that means there was no value in them either. Now you’re just thinking about how to make money on a cool Mercedes. Imagine that Jesus walked around the Holy Land and just had a blast without an iPhone 7S! There are now 60% materialists, and every day there are fewer and fewer of them.

There are much fewer spiritual people. 30% percent. A person pays attention to spiritual values ​​after 40-45 years. Wisdom comes, you begin to value health, you show more love for the world around you, freedom and creativity appear in life. You think more about God and life in general. The time for inner philosophy is coming. I want to be silent and even be alone more. But many become so absorbed in spirituality that they forget about the material side. Most of the great Creators were poor. “Creativity and freedom are important to me, but money doesn’t bother me” - only a person whose life values ​​are directed only towards spiritual world. And this is also a certain imbalance that needs to be eliminated. The faster the better.

Only spiritual materialists can be harmonious. In their value system, both are important. Personal development should be based on two types of values. Spiritual and material are two sides of the same coin. There is no need to deny one or the other. You need to connect, and then a powerful inner strength which can work wonders. One only helps the other. They don't interfere. What would happen if I had to ride a unicycle. You can drive, but the speed will not be the same. And the speed of development of your personality is very important in life. There are approximately 10% of spiritual materialists. And there should be much more! We must create new life on our new planet Earth!

7 of my main spiritual values

Health– this is the basis of life. One of the most important values. We begin to value health when “problems” begin in the body. Until that time, we drink, smoke, and it’s unclear what we eat. Other values ​​are probably even impossible without good health. This is difficult to explain to the younger generation. They have their own values. Give time to your health first.

Time is an invaluable resource. It cannot be bought, exchanged, or sold. They give you 70-100 years to realize your potential. You watch TV series day and night. Maybe you shouldn't have come to this planet? Watch the movie "Time". There main resource- time, not money. We turned everything upside down, chasing green pieces of paper.

Love- This is generally the basis of the universe. The magnet that connects everything. Love for yourself, loved ones, nature, your favorite business, life in general. Without a feeling of love, a person cannot be harmonious. Few people now have true Unconditional Love. My opinion is that many people say the word “love”, but do not fully understand what it is. Be grateful and loved.

Knowledge– this is the basis of your development. Previously, knowledge was difficult to obtain. People traveled to the other side of the world to get it. Now there is the Internet. This is a great benefit that was created to unite all knowledge. Many people again do not understand this. They give it to you, you don't take it. You think you know everything. Not at all…

Development– this is the basis for your freedom. Everything develops, everything grows, everything blooms. You probably like the smell of blooming roses. A scent that cannot be enjoyed. Only at a certain point a person stops developing. It does not reach its flowering stage. Flowering of your life. It ruins your potential.

Liberty is the basis for creativity. You have free will to create. You are free to make any choice. Your life is your choice. And only you are responsible for your choice. Real life begins when you are fully aware of your freedom. But in life, people often become slaves, forgetting this value. Working for my uncle takes up my whole life.

Creation is the ability of your Spirit. You have forgotten that you are the Creator. You think that only God can create. You are part of him, and he is part of you. You are one. A drop of water is no different in composition from the entire ocean. Same composition, same properties. It's hard to understand. To be a spiritual person means to be creative.

These are my main values ​​in life. For you, they may not be the main thing at all. I will recommend doing one exercise that will allow you to create your own value system in life. Take it Blank sheet, pen and write down everything you value most in life. The list must contain at least 100 values. Then go through this list and cross out the least important ones so that 50 remain. Those 7-9 life values ​​that will remain at the end and will be the most important for you.

Now think about whether you devote most of your time and energy to these values. If it turns out that you are constantly busy with others, then you are more likely to serve other people’s values ​​or those values ​​that are not first on the list. Exercise not life values ​​will help change your life! The main values ​​in life are called the main ones because they are our beacons and allow us to make sure that we are moving in the right direction.

For each of us, life values ​​are the fundamental guideline in various types activities. They contribute to personal growth, creation of a comfortable life, formation creative thinking etc. Everything is achieved by a person thanks to the hierarchy of values ​​he has built, which determines what priorities come first. This is the measure of human happiness.

Some people put their family first, others cannot imagine their well-being without others, and others devote themselves to interests and hobbies. Some representatives of humanity, refusing material goods, see their happiness only in spiritual self-improvement. In general, life values ​​are goals and priorities that, controlling a person’s life, determine his essence. The choice of fundamental guidelines is carried out by people depending on the level of development of their consciousness. However, either material should not be an extreme, as this will inevitably lead to excessive materialization or, conversely, illusoryness. Therefore, it is very important to achieve balance in the system of life priorities.

There are universal human values ​​that are equally important for all people. Each era sets its own system of priorities for the individual. In modern society, values ​​include health, family, work and education. The implementation of priorities that are significant to a person is very important for his recognition and self-affirmation.

Beginning to form in the family, life values ​​​​further determine the image and their worldview. By analyzing them, you can determine scarcity or wealth inner world person, the diversity of his interests and individuality. In the formation of a person’s value systems, his close environment(friends, family), religious beliefs, as well as national and social traditions.

The basics of life can be divided into several groups:

• Family. Involves long-term relationships (with parents, children, marriage partner, loved ones and friends) that are viewed as valuable. Thanks to the improvement of a person in a couple, his personal growth occurs more effectively. And warm relationships with family allow you to feel the fullness of happiness.
• Career. It involves targeted actions aimed at achieving a certain goal, thanks to which new opportunities and spheres of influence open up for a person.
• Favourite buisness. Helps reveal the inner world of a person. With a reasonably constructed hierarchy of life guidelines, your favorite pastime, hobby and many other interests will help strengthen your state of mental harmony and happiness.
• Money, comfort. An orderly life is considered as a value that requires certain financial costs.
• Education. Improving professional skills contributes to personal development and represents a certain value. Thanks to the acquisition of certain knowledge and skills, it is possible to perform high-quality and competent work, career.
• Health and beauty. Body values ​​(fit figure, developed muscles, well-groomed skin) are considered an important component of a healthy lifestyle, requiring systematic exercise.
• Personal growth. Includes certain social and psychological skills that contribute to the formation of maturity in views, attention to others, the manifestation of wisdom, and control of one’s feelings and emotions.

Thus, life values- This is a person’s way of self-affirmation, regulating his behavior.