Choosing the values that mean something to you is an important part of establishing a personal identity. But what happens if your values conflict with society’s?
Deciding what matters to you and what values you want to live by is something that we all must do at some point. If you value, for example, curiosity and discovery, your life may be very different than if you value financial independence.
Determining your values is not an easy task, and they may very well change over time. As you age, what is important to you might evolve, and your values will also change as a result.
The same is true for a society. What a community thinks is important and what gets collective attention and resources can vary, sometimes quite drastically. This might be influenced by a wide set of variables, including prominent individuals, technological change, international events, pop culture, and so on.
For example, in the early 1950s, space exploration was not a high priority for most. Then the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, kicking off the space race. President Kennedy then challenged our ambition, saying, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”
Values changed, and that dictated where our time, money, and energy was spent.
Given that both individuals and societies can have values and priorities, what happens when those two inevitably come into conflict?
The last ten or fifteen years have seen drastic changes to public values, which in turn has alienated or isolated people who disagreed with those changes. Is there a productive, healthy way to deal with that? How can an individual be true to what they believe in if all around them is the opposite?
Related questions: What are your values? How do you demonstrate your values? What is important? What makes a community?