Our feelings-based approach to values means we never find meaning in quantities unless we’ve assigned some special significance to the comparative aspect of those numbers with other numbers. Otherwise, all meaning is contained in quality.
General ideas are generally useful, but not in a practical sense until we start testing them. However, specific ideas can create patterns across other domains, and are the foundation for how we make general ideas. For that reason, theory is never as effective as implementation, though it’s longer-lasting (which is why teachers love theory and experts don’t).
We must slow down if someone else uses the same words as us but is concluding something irrational. They’re probably using a different definition of that word than you.
Philosophers debate endlessly about where values come from, but we can still definitely assign patterns to consistent things in reality. I may or may not see the color “blue”, and don’t know where it is, but the sky and ocean are still “blue” things in whatever form we call it.
The more powerful a value feels upon us, the more we’re enslaved to it instead of thinking rationally. This isn’t always bad, however, and is often how we can accomplish otherwise-impossible purposes.
The smarter a person is, the more likely they will derive values that deviate from truth. While intelligence is a type of power, it’s an inherent structural weakness, and part of why so many creative and brilliant people are also mentally ill.
Values are difficult things to take apart, mostly because of how much they connect to other values. As an average non-philosopher, it’s more advantageous for us to be aware of many of our associations than it is to understand one specific thing as an extracted entity.
We can only determine if a value is real by constantly exposing it to the world around us, mostly through language but through all forms of creation.
If we live with only the values of things and not the things themselves, our existence is a defective pile of vaguely recognizable abstractions. The Stoics say this is a good way to live, but modern psychology has literally proven that it’s not.
Western thought sharply demarcates values into groups. Eastern thought connects everything together. At the extreme, both of them are wrong because things are highly connected, but only some of the time.
Since we all understand values in a wobbly-pseudo-accurate state, the idea that values don’t move around even while people do (i.e., Plato’s assertion) is patently wrong. We can definitely become habituated to certain values, but that’s only the illusion of consistency.
We become more clear-headed when we more clearly focus our values. Everyone can benefit from 10 to 40 minutes a day of thinking about what they’ve learned and understood.
We can control our values to the degree we understand them.