Musings on Life

In the spectrum of human emotion, excepting love, anger is the most powerful of human emotions. It drowns all fear, focuses power and gives motivation matched only by love. It has over thrown tyrants, defended the weak and punished those that abuse others.

Love (for victims) necessitates justice, ie jail, fines, physical pain and even Hell at the universal divine level.

Justice is nothing but communal vengeance in an orderly way. Yet revenge is deemed wrong, but justice is good.  Revenge is a knee jerk reaction, charged with emotion and self interest; Justice an objective disinterested judgment and punishment of vicious, reckless or selfish behaviour.  The goal being to reform the person (fines, physical pain, jail time)...failing that, to make an public example of them to discourage the maladaptive antisocial behaviour (eg.public execution, and even more soberly: hell).

Love for the perpetrator results in grace - undeserved pardon at Christs expense for those who trust in Him.  As it is  undeserved there was no obligation on Gods part to provide a way of reconciliation to Himself. He could have justly wiped his hands of the human race and let us be punished for our rebellion and imperfection.

Want implies lack.

Value of anything is both objective and subjective. The subjective part depends on the subjects desire or need of the object. The more they need or want it, the more valuable it becomes to them...they are then willing to pay a higher price than others. This is conversely true also. Simple supply and demand. Deconstructed, it applies to all of life, to all things.

Axiology - the formal study of value. Simply put its the study of life mechanics. A division of philosophy but I think it belongs just as much to sociology - the study of human behavior. There is an objective yardstick that drives all people. A common denominator that all are driven by to some extent: the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion of pain.  The pursuit of enjoyment and happiness and the aversion of stagnation and misery. This is inclusive of higher pleasures and pains that go beyond simple senses. Eg... emotions, pride, shame, love and hate,self respect etc.  Love is the other driving factor, 'doing unto others as you would have them do to you'. That is the promotion of the universal good and minimization of suffering.

Value = utility + Aesthetics.
anything of any value to anyone can be broken down into these two categories:

Utility:that which is useful - eg. power, control, ability, knowledge, assets, wealth (for either aversion of pain or promotion of pleasure - of self and/or others)

Aesthetics: that which is intrinsically pleasurable (eg music, beauty, flavour, order, virtue, humour, fun etc)

Again, if anyone values anything its because they judge the object, activity or even person as 'valuable'.  Respect, money, time or attention given is proportionate to perceived value.  I say perceived because the judgment is made off of the limited knowledge or experience a person has of the object, activity or person.  It will always be limited knowledge.  This bypasses the natural innate value of all people given by God...as man was made in the image of God, there is a benchmark of universal respect, care and attention demanded by all people regardless of the aforementioned factors: utility + aesthetics.  For what profit is it to help a homeless man on the street who is neither useful to you, nor enjoyable? The value of this man is that he is made in the image of God, far above all animals...comparable to yourself.  Empathy and love demands you help him where possible but as to who does this is dictated by a persons outlook on life.

This is utilitarian thought but essentially it is just sociology, explaining why people do what they do, why they value certain things over other things...but different personal tastes adjust how pleasure is attained. What's amazing to me, may be average to you.  Still it will almost be universally observed that when given the option between a rotten apple or a good apple, people will choose the good apple.  There is a criteria we all use to judge things, it differs in some details for some things but at the macro level its the same.

All of life is just continual value judgments. To some extent behavior is predictable...even looking at your past decisions and reflecting as to why you did what you did or said what you said.  Its because at that moment in time you chose what you thought was most profitable (for yourself and/or mankind), or what you perceived to be most 'valuable' (not necessary what was actually most valuable).  This judgment criteria varies depending on how you live of course. Some live without regard to their fellow man, some live completely self-sacrificial lives for their fellow man, some for both God and their fellow man.  Most don't fall at the extremes but somewhere on the spectrum, contention between self-interest and the best interest of others continually exists, and always will.

All vice or 'sin' results from unbridled self interest disregarding the interests of the universal whole, this whole includes God and mankind - (murder, hatred, lies, slander, theft, idolatry, blasphemy, fornication, adultery, contention, pride, offense etc.).  All virtue takes into account the whole, the interests of all not just the self.  This explains why Christ called men to die to themselves daily: 'deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me in living and if need be dying' - no one perfectly fulfills this, but that's the aim.

God created life like this, he built the machine, created both pain and pleasure and determined their sources.  Its an explanation of life, not a method of directing life like hedonism - which says you should live by the pursuit of pleasure and aversion of pain -  such a bestial way to live.  The greater good at times demands self-denial of pleasure and endurance of pain which may be reversed if you were entirely selfish.  Undoubtedly the selfish life is the most profitable life in those terms, but devoid of love and the 'profit' comes at the expense of others.  Nothing in life is free.  Every action, every object  has its price.

People generally respond to pain in two ways: fear or anger.
Its self evident which response is the most useful. The other alternatives are no response or apathy - the stoic way. or responding positively with love and blessing - the christian way. The Christian way is not a natural response...only in Christ is this response even possible.