I read a small article talking about value and it motivated me to do some research on the Chinese character “值”, which means value and worth in English.
To find some photos I can use for this post, I entered “value” into some free image download websites. Guess what I get? 80% to 90% images returned are of coins, cash, bitcoins, crowns, climbing high, wallets, money tree…
When people upload images for others to free download, they are suggested to choose some keywords to categorize the image, and then image finders can search through the search engine on keywords to find the images.
What a reality! The massive cultural value orientation is based on money!
But, what is very contrasting is that our ancestors profoundly put human-人 and straight, upright, just-直 together to make the character 值-value, worth. In their eyes, the human value had nothing to do with human money, position, and power, instead, being able to stand straight, with upright #humanity and #justice makes up a human’s true value. It is valued more on a human’s basic character and innate drive and capability.
In this huge gap between reality and this “phenomenon”, I could not help to ask: to be a straight, upright, and just person, what on earth did it cost at their time? What on earth does it cost at our time? Why they had this kind of social measurement standard as value?
But why do we take for granted money, position, and power as “value” now?
When our children are surfing the internet to learn “value”, what lessons they are given? They learn from what we do.
#ancientwisdom #chineseculture #emotionalintelligence #authenticity #love #peace #unity
