Rand: What Are Values?

On Page 16 of her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness, Ayn Rand as what values are and why we need them: "To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why do men need them? 'Value' is what one acts to gain or keep. The concept 'value' is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals or values are possible." My response: What are values and why do they matter. Values is a touchstone of behavior under which each act is ranked as good or bad, or better or worse. Why do humans need them? Each creature, including humans, must have a purpose, a reason to live, a reason to get out of bed each morning, a reason to other striving, to make things better tomorrow than they are today, to push oneself to be better tomorrow than yesterday. As Jordan Peterson points out, there is no point to living and going forward unless one has something, and something worthwhile to do. Animals have values and goals built in, as instinctive aims, put there by the author of natural law. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, but we also must obey other sources of traditional values, and invent our own code, to some degree, if we maverize. By dialoging, pondering, and concentrating, humans will consciously contrive a system of beliefs, values and aims that comprise this system of ethics, or organized touchstone of behavior.