Universal Values: A Guide to Shared Principles

Posted on Oct 27, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Shared Universal Values

What are Shared Values?

Shared values are those widely accepted within a society, nation, or community. These include concepts like dignity, justice, freedom, respect for life, physical and social security, happiness, and beauty.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides guidelines for societal life and celebrates universal values, both implicitly and explicitly, within its principles. Examples include:

  • Freedom and equality in dignity and rights for all people
  • Right to life, liberty, and personal security
  • Elimination of all forms of slavery, servitude, torture, and degrading treatment
  • Recognition of innocence until proven guilty
  • Respect for privacy and honor
  • Right to found a family and the right to private property
  • Freedom of thought, expression, opinion, religion, and political preference
  • Freedom of peaceful assembly

Values from the Mexican Constitution

The Constitution of the United Mexican States and its derived laws also highlight universal values such as democracy, justice, nationalism, tolerance, and freedom of belief.

Categories of Universal Values

Universal values, both implicit and explicit, can be divided into groups based on their source:

  • Declaration of Human Rights: Freedom, justice, peace, equality, dignity, respect, safety, participation, democracy, nationalism, tolerance, solidarity, health, welfare, stability.
  • Political Constitution of the United Mexican States: Freedom, justice, peace, equality, dignity, respect, safety, participation, democracy, nationalism, tolerance, solidarity, legality, professionalism, honesty, responsibility, citizenship, and loyalty.
  • Values Shared Globally: Responsibility, solidarity, creativity, joy, respect, love.
  • Universally Recognized Values: Solidarity, loyalty, appreciation, freedom, beauty, industry, authenticity, generosity, responsibility, friendship, peace, justice.

Key Universal Values

Freedom

Freedom is the right of individuals to act without restrictions, as long as their actions don’t infringe upon the equivalent rights of others. It’s the capacity for self-determination, allowing humans to act as they desire. This is often referred to as individual freedom.

Exercising freedom means taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences. However, freedom is limited by natural laws (e.g., gravity) and moral, civil, religious, or ethical norms.

To act with true freedom, we must observe laws protecting citizen liberties and practice virtues like responsibility, respect, solidarity, tolerance, and justice. This ensures our freedom doesn’t hinder others.

Free people think and act independently while considering the well-being of those around them. They evaluate the consequences of their actions and make informed decisions.

Obstacles to freedom include fear, trends, ignorance, conformity, and limitations on analysis and critical thinking. Freedom allows us to dream big and work towards realizing those dreams.

Peace

Peace represents tranquility, calmness, serenity, humility, and moderation. It’s often understood as the absence of conflict but should also be viewed positively as the creation of harmony. Achieving peace requires support from other values like respect, tolerance, and empathy.

Love

Love can be expressed in three ways:

  • As an origin: The creation of something (e.g., art), conception, birth, inspiration, feeling.
  • As a process: Giving, sacrifice, offering, reasoning, forgiveness, enjoyment, pleasure, action, nourishment, unification.
  • As a result: Union (e.g., between people), success, determination, contemplation, joy, victory, peace, harvest, happiness, perfection.

Love can also be classified as “active” (seeking to initiate, provide, or share) and “passive” (seeking to receive and respond).

Love provides motivation, and family is a bond of love.

Solidarity

Solidarity signifies a strong, powerful, and useful relationship achieved through the unity of diverse beings. To practice solidarity, we must have the responsibility to cooperate and participate generously with humanity, regardless of race or social status.

Solidarity involves cooperation, participation, and sharing. It’s achieved in social life by connecting individuals with each other and the whole. This connection is formed when people are united by common values. Solidarity requires awareness and commitment to something worthwhile. It implies generosity, selflessness, and a spirit of cooperation and participation.

Generosity

Generosity is the willingness to give and share. It’s the opposite of selfishness. Participating and cooperating demonstrate greater commitment than simply helping. Generosity implies a degree of love but isn’t synonymous with it. Being generous means being ready for a relationship regardless of emotional connection. Generosity is a value because it offers real possibilities for our ideal as people.

Authenticity

Authenticity is the acceptance of oneself with truth, integrity, self-esteem, and personal identity. It means being true to oneself, having initiative, and being consistent, stable, and sincere.

Loyalty

Loyalty represents faithfulness and personal commitment. It means being true to someone based on a promise and the faith that they are reliable.

Kindness

Kindness encompasses compassion and understanding. It’s a disposition to do good with gentleness and creates a positive atmosphere. A kind person acts with gentleness, understanding, and compassion, fostering peace and confidence.

Responsibility

Being responsible means responding to obligations and the consequences of our actions.

Friendship

Friendship is a noble form of love that connects individuals. It involves sharing life and values, providing opportunities, enriching, supporting, understanding, and communicating.

Beauty

Beauty represents aesthetics and harmony. Defining beauty is subjective and has challenged thinkers for centuries. Like other key concepts (being, truth, life), beauty cannot be fully captured in a definition. It’s best approached from various perspectives and experienced to gain a vibrant understanding of its nature.

Gratitude

Gratitude arises from receiving something freely and disinterestedly. It inspires a sense of indebtedness, not just for what was received but also for the attitude behind the giving. Gratitude is relational, requiring at least two people: a giver and a receiver.

Industry

, authenticity, generosity, responsibility, friendship, peace, justice.

Freedom: The word freedom (derived from the Latin word liber). Is defined as the right of the individual to act without restrictions, provided that their actions do not interfere with the equivalent rights of others. Is the capacity to self-determination of the will, which allows human beings to act as they wish. In this sense, it is often called individual freedom. Exercising freedom means taking responsibility for our actions or behaviors and results. But freedom is limited, either by the dictates of nature (we can not throw us take the liberty of a seventh floor knowing the law of gravity) or by moral norms, civil, religious or ethical concerns (eg not doing what we do not like to do to us).
To act with true freedom we need, in addition to observing the laws protecting the liberties of citizens to practice the virtues of responsibility, respect, solidarity, tolerance, justice, etc. Thus, we can ensure that our freedom will never be a barrier to others.
Free people think and act for themselves, but they do in terms of seeking the welfare of those around them. They assess the consequences of their actions and make decisions accordingly.
“Impde we be free? The fear that paralyzes us, carried away by fads, ignorance, which limits the ability of analysis and critique, conformism that leads us to passively accept any imposición.La freedom allows us to” dream big “and also gives us the opportunity to work to realize our dreams.
Peace: Quiet, calm, serenity, humility, moderation. The word peace comes from the Latin word pax, and gives rise to bring peace, pacifism, apaciguar.Podemos distinguish an inner peace and outer peace, this is usually understood as the absence of conflicts but also has to be seen positively as the creation of areas of concordia.Para conducting peace requires the support of other values such as:

Respect, Tolerance, Empathy.

love: love can be expressed in three ways:

• As origen. “The creation of something (who creates a work of art, for example is expressing this kind of love), the conception, birth, dawn, inspiration, the feeling.
• As a process .- The delivery, the sacrifice, the offering, reasoning, forgiveness, fun, pleasure, action, food, unification.
• As resultado.-La union (between two people, for instance), success, determination, contemplation, joy, victory, peace, harvest, joy and perfection.

From another perspective, love can be classified into two types, one love “active”, which seeks to initiate a relationship, seeks to provide or share, and love “passive” that seeks to receive and respond.

Without love, we lack motivación.La family is the bond of love.

solidarity: the word comes from Latin solidus, designating a solid gold coin, consolidated, no variable. Therefore accept the terms in Castilian soldier, solder, build, strength, and in mid-nineteenth century, solidarity and solidarity. The term solidarity refers to a strong relationship, strong, powerful, useful, achieved by assembly (welding) diversos.Para beings carry out the value of solidarity, we must have the responsibility to cooperate and participate with generous humanity without distinction of race or social status. Cooperation: Participation in a common work participation: action to intervene. Sharing.

• This solid structure, dynamics and light is achieved in social life by tying each individual with others and with the whole.
• This connection is carried out when different people are united by common values.
• Solidarity is only possible between people who “are aware” and bind themselves to something worthwhile
• Solidarity implies generosity, selflessness, spirit of cooperation and participation.
generosity: It comes from the Latin verb derived Genus gignere, generous engendrar.Es who has the facility for giving and generosity darse.La opposed to selfishness. Participate and cooperate, commit more to the person who simply ayudar.La generosity implies a certain amount of love, but does not identify with este.Ser generous means being ready to be a relationship regardless afectiva.La generosity is a value because offers real possibilities for our ideal as people.
Authenticity: The word authenticity comes from the Greek word authentic (the one with authority), derived from Authentica (sole owner). It is the acceptance of himself with truth, integrity, self-esteem, personal identity. According to the etymology is thus true that holds the reins of his being, has initiative, is consistent with its mode of being stable and sincere.
Loyalty: Loyalty, faith, personal commitment. Loyalty comes from the Latin FIDES (faith), from which is derived from trust, confidence, confident, confidence. It is true to someone who has been promised something by virtue of which faith you have in it to be reliable.
kindness: Kindness, understanding, compassion. For goodness (derived from Latin bonus, good) means a disposition to do good coupled with a certain gentleness of character and a good climate. It is an attitude of gentleness, kindness, largesse, understanding and compassion. The kind person does good in a cozy, quiet, calm, patient. Create thereby around him an atmosphere of peace, which in turn generates confidence.
responsavilidad: The word responsibility comes from the Latin word will answer (answer). Being responsible means: 1) Responding to the call of the securities, and beg to be made; 2) Responding to the consequences of our actions.

Friendship: The word friendship comes from the voice of the common Latin amibitas, derived in turn from amicus (friend) and amare (love). Friendship is one of the most noble of the value of love and linking man with the beings of their environment. This linkage can occur in multiple ways and to varying degrees of perfection. The highest forms are called meeting. Not be reduced to be in relationship building. Two people can share life and never find in the strict sense, to do so, they intermingle their fields of life and values, namely: providing comparable opportunities, enriching, supporting, understanding and communicating.

Beauty: Beauty, beauty, harmony. The word derives from the Latin beauty Ballus, nice (which in turn comes from bonuses, good). Since ancient times emphasized the difficulty of giving a definition of this concept of subjectivity that it entails. Throughout the centuries, eminent thinkers proposed different definitions without thereby achieving more than narrow the topic. As with key concepts (being, truth, life), the concept and beauty can not be fully expressed in a definition. What is appropriate to approach it from different points of view and fill them with content through experience. In this way we can get an idea life, vibrant and suggestive of what is and involves the intriguing phenomenon of beauty.

thanks:

The word gratitude comes from Latin gratus vocals (pleasant, grateful) and Gratum (thanks). Is united in its root pleasing, pleasure, gratitude, gratuitous, congratulate. Reward. Receive a gift pleases and arouses gratitude. We welcome something that is pleasant to one person who comes is welcome. Remunerate someone for a service rendered to show it to us and we are pleased at the willingness of mutual aid.

The phenomenon of gratitude is relational: it requires the intervention of at least two people. Somebody give me something so free and disinterested. This gift inspires in me a sense of gratitude, I am debtor is not aware of what I received but the attitude that has inspired the donation.

laboriocidad:

Courage, bravery, courage and enthusiasm. Hard work comes from the Latin term work (work, work, fatigue), the verbs styling (get something with effort), develop, collaborate, and substantial farmer, lab. The hard work involves persistence in the effort, and this case required a certain amount of bravery and courage.

Justice:

Honesty, integrity. The term comes from the Latin noun justice justus, derived in turn from jus (law) is just the man who gives each one his rights, his due for what it is in all respects. In principle, every human being has a personal condition. It should be treated as a person, not as an object, a means to certain ends. Every person needs to survive biologically, meet certain needs (food, clothing, housing), and to grow spiritually, you must have some possibilities: fostering communication, free golf game, media training. As a requirement of their very nature, is entitled to have it all, and others have the obligation to provide the extent of its capacity.