In our world, everything has its own value - material and spiritual. But not everyone knows exactly what spiritual values are. As children we value the love and care of adults, as teenagers we begin to become attached to material things, and as adults we can be consumed by the pursuit of material values.
For the rest of my life I have remembered the words of an elderly teacher who lived in our house about the priority of moral values over material ones. That day we passed the exam at school and relaxed on a bench in the yard. An elderly woman approached us and made a remark, to which we responded with rudeness. And so, after many years, her words became clear: “Do with people the way you want them to do with you.” This is also called the boomerang effect.
Matter and Spirit
Philosophers of all times and peoples have sought an answer to the question of what comes first—spirit or matter. There is still no generally accepted answer to the question posed, and there is no consensus regarding the predominance of matter over spirit. Only one thing is obvious: there are perishable and incorruptible substances. The incorruptible substance includes the soul and spiritual values. Spiritual values are something that cannot be touched or tasted, but it brings pleasure.
On a note! Spiritual values are certain ideals that cannot be assessed or measured.
Spiritual values also include moral principles, which a person carefully protects and is ready to defend their significance. Moral principles are formed in childhood under the influence of parental upbringing. The child begins to realize that his behavior can be good and bad. The little man understands that good deeds will be rewarded, and bad deeds will be punished. Although a person’s action cannot be touched with one’s hands, it nevertheless exists and can be assessed positively or negatively. This is how acquaintance with spiritual categories begins.
With material categories it is much easier - you can touch them, you can buy them or make them yourself.
Material assets include:
- banknotes;
- goods in the store;
- jewelry;
- real estate;
- luxuries.
Spiritual values cannot be sold or exchanged, seen or tactilely felt. They are invisible and are located in the inner world of every person. Animals have no spiritual values - only instincts.
Spiritual categories include:
- friendship;
- Love;
- devotion;
- understanding;
- creativity, art;
- religious feelings;
- moral ideals;
- moral qualities.
Attachment to material values is typical of young and middle-aged people. It is very rare to find an elderly person for whom material things are of particular importance. This comes from the realization that money will not help you gain love and friendship. This realization may have taken years.
Spiritual categories relate to the inner world of a person and form him as a person. Thanks to them, a worldview and an individual view of the world are formed, and the search for truth and beauty is carried out. With the help of spiritual guidelines, we make the right (from our point of view) choice every day and make responsible decisions.
Human cultural values
A person lives in society. This or that society, if we consider it as a society, lives in accordance with its own rules and traditions, which are also called culture. A person cannot exist without a specific goal. It is culture that puts forward certain goals for the individual. This is not a scientific definition. Science identifies causes that exist in certain time periods. The goals that a person sets for himself allow him to predict the future. It is determined by the actions of the individual.
In the animal world there is no system of values from which the definition of what the ideals of culture is formed. But it exists in human society. Moreover, the goals that an individual sets for himself are largely determined by culture. The culture of a particular society is based on traditions. It develops at the genetic level. That is, it is passed on from generation to generation. Society sets a difficult task for a person - to preserve culture. Throughout the evolution of mankind, there have been a large number of different cultures. There was Chinese, Egyptian, Old Russian. Each of them cared about passing on its value system to the next generation.
Moral ideals
This spiritual category is worth talking about separately. Psychologists include the following moral ideals:
- meaningful;
- aesthetic;
- actually moral;
- family.
Meaningful ideals express our worldview position. It is usually formed by education at home and at school. Then the worldview can change dramatically if life circumstances contribute to this. Worldview shapes the individual’s attitude towards the world and people around him.
Aesthetics refers to emotional experiences and reflects the state of a person’s soul. Aesthetic feelings are formed as the individual self-realizes in society. This category includes a sense of the beautiful and the tragic, the sublime and the comic.
Moral values themselves determine the relationships between members of society. These include patriotism, mutual assistance, the concepts of good and evil. The desire to fulfill a moral duty to parents, the Motherland and society is formed in the process of raising a child by parents and school. In the future, moral categories can expand and cover such concepts as honor, conscience, personal dignity, justice and philanthropy.
Family values underlie the moral education of a person as a unit of society. It is in the family that the first experience of socialization of a small citizen takes place. Without a family, the child would have repeated the fate of Mowgli, who was deprived of a clear example of social relations. In the family, the child receives his first lessons of good and evil, eats spiritual food along with material food, and is formed as a member of society.
Interpretation of the term
After doing a little research, we could not find a consensus on the question “what are ideals?” The definition can be completely different and ambiguous.
The problem is that for each individual who lives in a certain society, the interpretation of the term “ideal” is unique. A person follows his ideas, which are embedded in his subconscious. For some, these are ideals of external beauty, and for others, these are spiritual ideals. But you cannot treat them as a static phenomenon. For example, in childhood there may be ideals of a prince or princess. They will have certain character traits and appearance.
As the child grows older, these ideals begin to change. This needs to be taken quite seriously. Many children take for ideals images that are not ideal at all. The ideals that teenagers set for themselves are especially serious. For example, an action hero who breaks the law. Following one's ideal can lead a child to repeat the fate of his idol.
Sometimes a successful person is chosen as an ideal. By following his advice, you can achieve success in business yourself. The older generation considers veterans, heroes who saved their homeland and thousands of lives, as ideals and role models. But each person perceives ideals in his own way. Because everyone has their own value system.
Spiritual Concepts
Now let's look at the basic spiritual concepts accepted in our society. I would like to say right away that spirituality is not only religious feelings. The concept of spiritual includes everything that is not material. Religious leaders do not agree with this, but from a psychological point of view this is exactly the case.
Spiritual categories:
- beauty;
- good and evil;
- true;
- art;
- creation;
- Love.
Beauty is an intangible phenomenon; it cannot be touched. But in the soul, beauty leaves an indelible mark, giving pleasure and pleasure. However, beauty in our world manifests itself only through a material medium - the human body, voice, work of art, locality. Everyone’s sense of beauty is different, and it largely depends on upbringing and local mentality. What is considered beautiful by Europeans may be perceived as ugly by Asians, and vice versa. Therefore, beauty is a very relative category.
Good and evil are also formed under the influence of spiritual categories. These concepts do not coincide in different social formations. In Russian society, a person who knows how to sympathize with others and extends a helping hand to everyone in need is considered kind. A kind person does not think of life for his own sake; he needs to help others and live in their interests. To bring benefit to the world is the credo of kindness. Accordingly, evil is the complete opposite of good.
Truth also cannot be touched with hands or tasted/smelled. However, many more people died because of the truth than because of enmity. The search for truth haunts modern people too: it has not yet been found. Truth, like beauty, is different for everyone. Sometimes the truth is perceived as a lie, and a lie is considered the truth. Why is this happening? Even philosophers have no answer to this.
Love also belongs to spiritual categories. This is exactly the feeling that all people on earth need. Love meets a newborn baby in the person of its mother and accompanies it throughout its life. Love can be different - friendly, marital, parental, filial - but it is always based on altruism. If altruism is absent in a relationship, true love is out of the question. Love is always empathy, loyalty, respect and trust.
Art belongs to the category of spiritual values from the very beginning of human existence. Through art, people express their attitude towards the world, other people and society as a whole. Art is the expression of one's feelings and emotions through words, movement, singing or pictures. Art can be realistic and surreal, depending on what creative position the artist takes and how he perceives the world.
Creativity is closely related to art , through which people realize their abilities and talents. Creativity includes monuments to outstanding figures, literature, poetry, painting and music. Creativity is inherent only in man, therefore he has spiritual needs for self-expression through sound, movement and color.
However, creativity is necessarily expressed through material substance. Therefore, in order to purchase a work of literary genre or a painting, you need to pay money.
Ideal human life
From all of the above, we can say that each person has his own value system. Each person sets certain goals for himself. By achieving them, a person realizes his ideal of life.
For one, the ideal in life is family, for another, material values. Each of us has our own ideal of life. Everyone makes efforts to achieve it. To do this, he sets goals for himself. This is very important, it is the goal that motivates a person to develop in the direction he needs.
What are moral principles
Moral principles are a form of manifestation of the internal moral requirements of a particular person, a group of people or an entire society. Human society is constantly transforming, and moral standards are changing along with it: what was considered unacceptable and reprehensible some time ago can now be considered normal and not cause condemnation.
The formation of moral principles is greatly influenced by religion, spiritual teachings, culture, education, and personal beliefs of each individual. Adhering to moral standards, a person will not allow himself to descend into the state of a wild animal, and will keep his instincts within certain limits accepted in a given society.
Attitude of scientists
The standards and moral values of different times differed from each other. Many famous thinkers and poets raised this topic in their own works. For Aristotle, the moral standard consisted of self-contemplation, knowledge of the truth and detachment from worldly affairs. According to Kant, within any personality there is a “perfect man.” The abstract for his actions is the moral standard. This is a typical internal compass that brings a person closer to perfection, but at the same time does not make him perfect. Each philosopher, scientist, and theologian had his own image and his own awareness of the moral standard.
Target
Moral standards certainly contribute to the self-education of the individual. A person, through an effort of will and the awareness that the goal must be achieved, strives to achieve and conquer the heights of the moral plane. Moral standards are the basis on which moral frameworks and norms are formed in the future. All this happens on the basis of interests in a person’s life. The current situation in which the individual finds himself is also important. For example, during the war years, moral standards focused on the image of a courageous, valiant, generous person who possesses a weapon, but uses it only to protect his own land and his own relatives.
Impact on the development of society
Awareness of the moral standard extends to the entire society. A person dreams of creating himself in a society that will be built on humane and fair principles. In this case, the standard is the image of such a society, in which there can be an expression of the interests of certain social groups, their concepts of higher justice and the social system that would be the best.
The moral characteristics of a public standard consist of the equal distribution of actual benefits between members of society, the relationship between human rights and obligations. Highly moral elements include the capabilities of the individual, his place in life, his contribution to public life and the amount acquired in return for this. Moral standards determine the positive characteristics of life and the ability to achieve a happy existence. In striving for perfection, which is the ultimate goal of all endeavors, man and society must use only moral means.
Impact of modernity
During the communist system, moral standards were called upon to serve the formation and strengthening of the existing system. An indicator of the highest morality of modern society is a harmoniously developed personality. She is distinguished by her zeal for moral perfection. Society makes certain moral demands on its members. Together they form a model of a fully developed personality. Constantly enriching themselves, replenished with something new, they reflect the development of the moral practice of socialist society. The society of the times of socialism puts in 1st place personal culture, an active civic position, a sense of public duty, consistency between words and deeds, and honesty.
The moral standards of our time have an active and active character, connected with the needs of society. They receive real outlines in the socialist assistance of members of society. The moral principles of modernity operate intensively in the areas of self-improvement, moral education and self-development. Plekhanov said that the more actively a person strives to achieve a public standard, the higher he becomes morally. But even in socialist times, highly moral characteristics, while not coinciding with reality, go one step ahead. They set certain goals for a person, consisting of constant movement, a continuous process of development. Increasing the social activity of the individual, improving social practice and moral education - all this together will help resolve the contradictions that have arisen between reality and the moral standard.
Content
Lenin considered moral standards to be the “moral highest”, combining positive properties within themselves. In his opinion, they represented everything people needed and were a prototype for society. The content of the standard is constructed from moral parameters assessed on the highest scale. Consciousness builds to an amazing degree those highly moral traits, properties, and deeds of people that are valid and real in their own essence. Society and the individual strive to implement moral values. Each member of society must think with dignity and truth, be able to build business and interact. The standard is accompanied by certain positive sensory manifestations. These include admiration, approval, and the desire to be better. All this is a strong catalyst that forces a person to strive for self-education and self-development. There are a number of types of standards: regressive and obscurantist, real and utopian. The content of moral properties has changed throughout history. Standards of the past tense, due to their own illusory nature and isolation from reality, not aimed at the activity of an individual, remained difficult to access. Even the essence of progressive, highly moral characteristics took personal wishes as a basis, without understanding the impartiality of the law and the paths of merit.
