If communication has a value embedded it in, then it follows that you connect because you share that value. What are your own personal values, and what role do they play in your own bias towards issues and the plan you have for yourself? From deciding on where to spend your vacation or when to attend graduate school, to starting a new business venture—values are the basis for the information you accept or reject, and the direction that determines your life. Values, beliefs, purpose, and goals: These relate to your own bias, or the prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.

1.) Read the following list of values, and then write down the top ten values that guide you. Rank them by number with 1 being the most important. Select from the following:

Accomplishment
Adventure
Caring
Comfort
Creativity
Excellence
Family
Financial
Friendship
Fun
Happiness
Health
Home
Honesty
Humility
Independence
Integrity
Knowledge
Leadership
Love
Loyalty
Peace
Power
Recognition
Religion
Security
Serving others
Solitude
Stability
Structure
Trust
Wisdom
Values
Values refer to a set of ideas that guide an individual on how to evaluate right versus wrong, whereas beliefs refer to a set of doctrines, statements or experiences a person holds as true, usually with evidence or proof. Both are deeply intertwined because beliefs influence how an individual develops values. Your beliefs are specific to you—to all that has contributed to your development up until this point. These are personal, like values are, and they differ from one individual to another. Values and beliefs influence bias.

Life is Good:

“We have Superpowers: Optimism enables us to access the 10 most important core values we have for leading a happy and fulfilling life. We call them the Life is Good Superpowers. But, unlike X-Ray vision, bullet speed, or Herculean strength, they’re accessible to us all. Openness, Courage, Simplicity, Humor, Gratitude, Fun, Compassion, Creativity, Authenticity and Love. By embodying these values Superpowers every day, we positively impact our culture, our products, and our community.” https://apply.workable.com/life-is-good/

Values and Mission Statements
Values influence the direction an individual or a corporation/institution takes. They provide the basis for a mission statement. Mission statements are used to guide a company’s or an individual’s strategic planning. Mission statements are value-based and answer the question of Why?

Here are a few examples:

Professional Mission Statement:

Life is Good: “To spread the power of optimism.”

An individual’s mission statement for his or her personal life:

To have a stable relaxed balance of creativity and adventure in my work and personal life.

If values are the planning environment and the mission statement is the overall vision and guide, then goals are the product or outcomes of what that vision is aiming for. Goals get you to where you want to be. They are the clear and practical things that you actually do to accomplish the mission.

How a Mission Statement Influences Goals
Patagonia: https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/company-info.html

Professional Mission Statement: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

Goals:

“Promote silent sports that promote connection between us and nature. Sports such as skiing, snowboarding, surfing, fly fishing, paddling and trail running.

Donate our time, services and at least 1% of our sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups all over the world who work to help reverse the decline in the overall environmental health of our planet.

Our business activity – from lighting stores to dyeing shirts – creates pollution as a by-product. So we work steadily to reduce those harms. We use recycled polyester in many of our clothes and only organic, rather than pesticide-intensive, cotton.

 

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.

God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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