Tracy Duvall

Recently, another member of the Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation to which I belong gave a sermon on his cosmology as it concerns human morality. It dawned on me that I didn’t know the basic perspective of almost anyone else in my life, including the UU clergy and my family members, and it seemed like it would be interesting and instructive for more people to similarly share their ideas on this topic. So here I go, simplifying in order to keep it at the length of a sermon.

Why do we have the values that we do?

My answer is two-pronged: reasons to believe my explanation and reasons to discount other explanations.

First, let me be clear that, by values, I refer to what we think are the right and wrong ways to act. These include anything from prepared, explicit statements, such as the Unitarian Universalist covenant, to implicit ideas that find overt expression only in reaction to specific conditions. But values are not the same thing as people’s behavior, given that people will do things they believe are wrong, and they will treat some behaviors as basically neutral.

With that out of the way, the answer to the question is simple and probably obvious: we develop our values in interaction with our environment. This occurs in myriad ways, and the process can be implicit or explicit. For example, people teach each other, as I am attempting to do right now. In other cases, we pick up lessons, often without realizing it, by observing our own experiences and those of others. Short-term situations alter the strength and even content of our various values, such as, in my experience, when a person is drunk or high, has low blood sugar, is being physically attacked, or experiences libertas (e.g. on spring break), among other possibilities.