Q&A: From Identification to Values
From Identification to Values
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Following my reading of the Rabbi's books and further elaboration beyond them, I understood that the initial line of thought should be to try to understand which values you hold and what goals you have, and that this is done through identification. But what do you do when you can't manage to form identification with anything?
In addition, the question will always come up that the identification you speak of could depend on external factors—like an outside person trying to instill in you a sense of identification, or the environment in which you were born—and then that basically makes truth depend on contingencies, doesn't it?
It may be that the questions didn't come out very orderly, and that's probably because of a certain vagueness (which creates quite a feeling of despair) on this topic.
Answer
The questions did not come out clearly, and that has nothing to do with vagueness in the topic. You need to think more and work on the careless wording. I'll address it briefly.
If you mean identification in the psychological sense—it is not relevant. If you mean identification in the cognitive sense (value intuition)—that is indeed the basis for our values.
If you do not find emotional identification within yourself, that is not important. If you do not find cognitive identification, then apparently you have no values. If that itself bothers you, that means you do have identification. Someone who has no identification is not bothered by anything.
External influences can affect your values, but not determine them. It is impossible to avoid influences, but you need to make decisions within them.
Discussion on Answer
Then you need to work on it more intensively. If something is true, you have to make sure that you act accordingly and actually do so. And the heart follows the actions.
But what if purely cognitive identification doesn't manage to motivate you?