No Need to Search Far for Our Own Noble Values

I was asked quite recently by a friend: "What is the difference between 'values' and 'virtues' if they both encourage positive behavior?" Her question had me thinking quietly for a while, before starting to attampt an answer: "virtues would refer to a developed personal predisposition to behave in a way that we validate our honor and dignity as persons, that would be helpful or at least pleasant to our fellow-humans, that would contribute to our collective attainment of the 'Prime Directive' to love one another."

. Put to its essential premise, we love one another not because anybody told us to, but rather more because we have atained enough wisdom to realize that, after all, we were all one, and doing anything that would harm 'others' or put them at disadvantage would actually be harming ourselves and putting ourselves at disadvantage.

. Being consistently virtuous is something valuable to everyone of us. But so is being comfortable, having a light workload is slso valuable; having pleasurable possessions is valuable; and being known and respected by many people is, of course, also valuable.

. When a person holds man things valuable simultaneously, and he knows he can't have everything, he begins to define his priorities, his own hierarchy of values. The problem with the term 'values' is that we often use this alone when it can only be clear within such phrases such as "hierarchy of values," or "personal values system."

. To choose as priority values those concerns that validate our human honor and dignity, the oneness of all humans, would be a virtue in my own consideration, but making more money well beyond my need is very low in my own hierarchy.
There are many written guides for human behavior that would be more virtuous (the Ten Commandments), highly effective (Stepen Covey's Habits); more spiritual (Redfield'sCelestine Insights); happier and more in harmony with others (Desiderata and the Katipunan's Kartilya), and many, many others.

. We don't hve to look far to find our own guide. Our very young sage, Emilio Jacinto, has long given us his Kartilya and the classic Liwanag at Dilim, among others, and there are many more that are as practical and universally applicable. Recently i composed a "Naitagong Habilin ni Pilosopong Tasyo," and it is now a centerpiece my growing novelette, titled "TASYO: Ngayon na ba ang Bukas sa Habilin ng Pantas?" published very recently.

. On the seventh day of every month, a growing number of Filipinos in the homeland and abroad, meditating on their own personal appliation of the Kartilya's 14 lessons on their lives. Anyone interested would just have to read the contents in http://kartilya.8m.net/ and they are perpetually guided.

. We don't have to search verfar. e've had the Kartilya for more than a hundred years!

--ding reyes of zambales
03-07-2010