System of values

When you are young you can pretty much meet anyone and blend. That makes sense since you are still building your personality, so you can get along without too much conflict. However, as you get older you find connecting to strangers harder because you will have found your System of values that, if not shared with the other person, will make understanding each other too complex to maintain a connection. Fortunately, you will find strangers with whom everything clicks and you understand each other without need for much communication, which are the best relationships one could hope for.

While it’s important to acknowledge the underlying truth that you cannot build long-lasting relationships with anyone, that doesn’t mean you should only stay in your circle and reject everything that’s beyond. I believe it’s important to accept that people can and will have other systems of values that might be partially or completely out of your understanding, which leaves you with two paths forward:

• fight it
• acknowledge it

You clearly see that in politics where people are constantly fighting each other, sadly sometimes literally, to assert that their system of values is better. This is the point in your reading where you could point out that there are systems of values that should be rejected by everyone. Again, the other side could, and generally will, think the same way, so you will be forced into a fight.

Clearly, anyone should be able to criticize any system of values while acknowledging the fact that it exists. The first step of discussion is accepting that other people have different views than yourself, which you could word as respect. Only then can communication happen, exchanging ideas which can explain what leads to values other than the ones you hold.

You would be surprised how easy it is to discuss hard topics when accepting that both sides can be right at the same time.