Using values to parse options would increase self-esteem

Increase Self-esteem
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Using values to parse options would increase self-esteem. I arrived at this thought while reading my Exeter class notes.  I began to use my ontological values - tolerance, democracy, helpfulness and non-idolatry - as a means of considering life choices I had made. Exeter continues to impress me beyond any school I ever attended and I now understand that it is because it  strikes me as having mirrored these values at least to some extent, and to have had a similar impact on classmates more than a half-century later. I do not have anything approaching a similar feeling for the college I attended. Nor for most institutions of higher learning in the US. The reason now seems to me not my manifest faults and abnormalities, but the relative absence of these values  at college. Had I been aware of the massive importance of these values, I doubt I would have decided to attend my college. I would have gravitated to one of the  few institutions where these values were more manifest. The College of Wooster and Oberlin come to mind. If there is any take-away from this, it is that running virtually any decision through the gauntlet of these ontological values (universal, general, part of being) will at least increase self-esteem and at most save you from decisions that  later turn out to have been wrong-headed. Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store 


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Virtues cut both ways. Values lead to progress.

Virtues cut both ways. Values lead to progress.  An elementary grammar of ethics reveals it What do courage, honor, hard work, patience, loyalty and carefulness have in common? They are all virtues. And they are all binary, meaning that they can be either-or, either positive or negative. Run through them. Any virtue can morph into the ugly, the harmful, the deleterious. Values stand up much better. They are ontological. The ontological values of Triadic Philosophy Democracy Tolerance Helpfulness Non-idolatry. They are generals, universals. Each can lead to considered actions whose results prove positive. These values powered  the Presidential election of 2012. Had the GOP won you would have heard the virtues noted here applied to the winners. Check out Triadic Philosophy 100 Aphorisms at  Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store 

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