Values are important if life is to be lived as it meant to be lived, with purpose and with goals in mind. Values are developed as one matures. They are a combination of one’s personal preferences, education, parental involvement and environmental involvement. One never directly sets out, not unless they are in a study to evaluate how values are developed, to develop values. Values are an automatic outcome of one’s thinking and one’s experience. They are help along by education and daily awareness and change as one matures and gain insight  on previous thoughts.

At birth, or possibly even before, values are being formed in some elemental fashion. These have to do with the primal forces that  shape developing thoughts and actions. Instincts, such as crying to alert others that something is wrong, is inherent from the very first. There’s not much though put into signaling from an empty stomach, a painful bloating stomach, a need for warmth, but how each need is met, is being programmed by the body and will begin forming  rudimentary value system.

As an example, if a first little whimper is at first ignored and it takes a big blast of anger and a loud squall to get fed, to have a pain stopped, to be made warm and comfortable, then this will become a pattern. The little guy could be thinking, - yes somehow thinking is kicking in - what’s the use of waiting around and whimpering politely, a big loud roar always works. While with another, the opposite effect could be working, a little whimper and a tiny little grunt or two always get results, then why go full blast.

Values are not totally at the mercy of life’s experiences, but tendencies to react one way or another are inherited.
They can never be ignored when trying to evaluate how one evaluates. As a newborn develops and is learning about the world of values and how to react to pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, wonder, disbelief, discovery, so are value systems of those caring for these little slave drivers being developed.

New mothers are often as bewildered as infants are the new experiences that are thrust upon them. How they react will have to do prior education, intelligence and intuition, and yes, how they have been cared for, plus their own parental and familial inheritances. Internally, humans are influenced by their DNA, their preset ways of reacting, but these are conditional upon the various environmental influences that they are subject to encounter as they journey on through life.

Learning from life and forming values, positive and negative, are inescapable. This author knows that and as a mother of six, has learning from what each child inherently brought with them. This interaction, give and take, plus interactions as one ages and ponders on questions of life, is what develops value systems. Even the reactions of those receiving parental care have an effect on the giver as well as the receiver.

Adjusting to conditions that alter value systems for better or worse, are forever strengthening or weaken value systems. Yet it is well to understand that none of this should be a problem if moral concerns have been well learned and understood. Acceptance and a willingness to do the best one can do under each given day of life, will automatically take care of the value system. One learns, as an example, that it is far more comfortable to do the right thing and prevent guilt - that creepy finger pointing interior that holds one to certain set of values, than to go against it and berate oneself emotionally for misbehaving. To learn from one who truly knows human values read what the Dali Lama has to say!