The highest definition of "values"

I have spent most of my life pondering values, never once lapsing into the most common uses of that term. The most common use is monetary. The value put on goods and services. There is a second use of values. Take American values or family values. Code phrases for putting country first or promoting one ideal of the family.

There is another notion of values that is actually a celebration of  virtues or characteristics. An excellent example is honor. Honor is a virtue. It has no value in itself. No characteristic is intrinsically valuable.

The values I regard as both transcendent and immanent are universal. The root value non-idolatry represents a conscious and free decision to have no idols on this planet, to worship nothing and nobody.

Human progress is the gradual, painful overcoming of evil in the world. Evil can be defined as the conscious taking of life. And the accidental loss of life.

Non-idolatry, affirming that we live within a penumbra of what cannot be exactly or finally defined, is the root or core ontological value.

The three active universal values are tolerance, helpfulness and democracy. They operate interactively. Someone who fights for democracy will need to exercise tolerance almost every minute. Helpfulness is the very purpose of existence - love of all.

These values emerge from an encounter with the Jesus of Mark.

We are at a watershed. The revaluer of values works for the unprecedented. The unprecedented is a moral or ethical leap beyond the world which feasts on the idolatries of violence, intolerance, unhelpfulness and rule of the many by the few.