Encore: A Glossary of Values

Writer’s Note: “A Glossary of Values” was begun several years ago, circa 2002-2003, and this version was completed in October 2008, and appeared on the pages of the web log City and Country, Boy and Man October 22, 2008.


A GLOSSARY OF VALUES

Art – work created and crafted for aesthetic pleasure; work of beauty, depth, energy, insight, intelligence, relevance, and truth

Beauty – fineness of form; an attractive, suggestive wholeness, having physical and spiritual appeal; affectingly sensuous

Civility – a sensitive or intelligent regard for others that shapes manners and relationships; the desire and habit of avoiding injury to others; and avoidance of vulgarity and cruelty

Common Sense – assumptions based on experience; intuition; ordinary logic

Compromise – resolution of conflict or disagreement; settling for less than one’s original intention or goal in order to maintain cordiality, peace, or another important aspect of a relationship

Context – the preceding and/or surrounding history, ideas, and relationships; environment

Contradictions – conflicting ideas and feelings; the discordance between ideas and reality

Democracy - civic participation; sharing of responsibility in government, in public representation and activity

Economics – wealth generation and distribution; financial relations in a society; the system—the laws, rules, practices, and beliefs—involving money in a community, city, state, or nation

Evidence – observed fact; books and documents; trial and testing; expert testimony

Fairness – balanced or objective treatment; justice; a valuation rooted in established criteria

Form – structure; organization

Generosity – the act of giving out of choice, instinct, bounty, uncompelled giving; an open way of being, and a special sympathy of insight

Honesty – adhering to facts, intention; candor, clarity, directness; truth

Imagination – creativity, dream, invention; an ability to give vision to what does not yet exist or to see the connections between what does exist

Innovation – new forms of thought or product; experiment; changes in received orders

Intelligence – thinking ability; criticality; the capacity to weigh experience, analysis, observation, intuition, and other sources of information

Integrity – being true to the best, deepest, highest aspects of one’s character, discipline, philosophy, and character; dependable, recognizable quality;

Intellectual Rigor – thorough criticality of both details and overall structure and content

Intergenerational – the relationship between differing age groups; the potential of recognizing or responding to ideas, events, facts regardless of age

Justice - fundamental fairness, in interpretation and treatment, and regarding rewards and punishments

Knowledge - fact, truth, propositions for which there is proof; a body of evidence and insight; a tradition of knowing, speaking, and writing.

Lyricism – musicality of language; elegant and poetic diction

Multicultural – the presence of cultural diversity; an appreciation of artistic and philosophical traditions from different nations

Nuance - complexity, difference, subtlety; variety of experience, perception, and texture

Observation - what can be known through the senses and/or by study

Passion – a great intensity of feeling inspired by an idea, object, or person; an obsessive regard

Pleasure – the act or feeling of being pleased; elation, enjoyment, entertainment; a rise in spirit, a lightness of being

Power – authority, convention, and force; forms of power often work to undermine, deceive, stereotype, embarrass, intimidate, misinform, smash—as power often does whatever it takes to maintain itself

Quality - character, integrity, wholeness

Resources – useful character(s), ideas, artifacts, books, information, and tools; material that can enable one to make desired gains

Security – a belief in or sense of well-being, of necessary resources; the satisfaction of survival needs; ability or facility for self-defense and self-preservationSensuality – appeal to the senses; the facility to have or to provoke pleasant physical sensations

Spirituality – of the spirit; perception of life beyond surfaces; an abstract apprehension of the connection between living things

Subcultures – the shared habits, relationships, rituals, and values among people who aren’t dominant in a civilization or society; minority, rather than majority, culture; and often subcultural energies and forms reinvigorate the dominant culture

Technique – ability to do what is required by a given art or discipline

Tradition – the inherited culture, logic, and philosophy of an art or nation; the ongoing discourse within a discipline, with its own particular grammar and vocabulary and object or objects of concern

Understanding - comprehension; clear, right, judgment

Virtue - evidence or nature of being fine, good, right

Wackiness - eccentricity; an appreciation for, or inclination to, absurdity or wild imagination

Xenial - hospitality

Youth - early life; the spirit of possibility

Zest - energy, enjoyment, pleasure