What Values Make You a Good Person?

1. Valuing Human Life

A lack of value for human life leads to terrorism and genocide. Regimes around the world both modern and historical have cast off their respect and value for human life and have slaughtered hundreds and thousands on the back of it. Valuing human life also means that if your beloved dog was drowning and if a stranger was drowning, you would choose the human. If you value human life, it shouldn't be a tough choice, but it can be. For example, what if the person drowning was a stranger but a criminal? Or, what if your dog was a puppy and the person was ill with terminal cancer? What if the drowning person was a pregnant woman? What if your dog had saved you from drowning the year before? What if it was a child drowning? What if it was a Cuban drowning as he tries to enter the country illegally? The value comes in being able to make what you believe is the right choice.

2. Self-Respect

Having self-respect does not mean being selfish or vain. It means respecting yourself and the fact that you only have a few years on this earth. It means that you may have to go through bad times, degradation and great upset, but it means you do not purposefully put yourself in such positions just to please another person. You have more respect for yourself.

3. Valuing the Future of a Child

A person with this value will not take drugs during pregnancy or use foul language in front of a child. This sort of person will help a child understand the world and help a child understand that there are consequences he or she can easily avoid. A person with this value protects a child from mental, physical and emotional harm at all costs.

4. A Respect for the Earth

A good person doesn't throw his or her litter over a wall into a field, doesn't dump stuff in the ocean, doesn't create excessive waste and doesn't buy caged chickens or their eggs. A person that values the earth will also value everything in it. What makes you a good person is a respect and appreciation for the earth. This also means making sure you do not support companies that damage the earth, such as coffee growers that are not fully forest alliance certified.

5. Valuing People's Right to a Contrary Opinion

This is a troublesome value because is it one that is pushed very heavily by liberal groups and liberal parties, yet they are very vicious (to the point of bullying) when it comes to people that oppose them. Republican groups do not bully people with contrary opinions, they just ignore them, which is not ideal either because it can invalidate people's opinions (be they right or wrong).

6. Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them do to You

Say what you want about the Bible, whoever wrote it certainly nailed this little value. The world would be a far better place if we only did to others what we would have them do to us. We may be a little less eager to steal, murder and rape if, by doing so, it made it possible for the same to happen back to us. Suffice it to say, if we all held this value, then we may ALL be a little happier.

7. A Respect for Womanhood

Do not fight the women at work, and do not talk behind their backs. Work together with them to help all the women at work get ahead. Do what men do and band together instead of complaining about each other and stabbing each other in the back. Also, reach out to women's groups in places where women are oppressed or experience inequality on a national scale, or to groups like Pussy Riot that are in prison in Russia because they fought for womanhood and female rights. Support the rights of Muslim women but respect their religion.

So now it's your turn to let me know what values you judge yourself against and what you would instill in your daughter(s). Are there core values you think are missing from my list?