Moral Values in the past, present and future

Don't roll your eyes because of the title, I am not about to bragg about good old times or conservative ideas, but I still think that sometimes it is important to look back and check for things we might have lost along the journey.

Not everything our grandparents considered values or important qualities have been outdated, on the contrary. I strongly believe that we should regain some of the past qualities, though always with moderation. As I recently read: A virtue is only a virtue as long it is exercised in moderation, everything going into the extreme turns into a flaw. Imagine a tolerant man starting to tolerate other people commiting crimes or someone thorough checking things so intesively that he never comes to an end.

I consider loyalty to be good example for this. Loyalty is important in any sort of relationship: friendship, family, work just to name a few. But what happens, when loyalty is everything that counts and turns us blind? In this case we might end up following people or ideas, without ever questioning them. We should never forget: Everything worth our loyalty is able to withstand it being questioned, no matter if it is an idea or a person or a group. Unfortunately these days most people barely grin at th idea of loyalty ridiculing it.

Another value that we are loosing more and more is courtesy. Everyday we can expirience that, from kids yelling at their mothers to people barking the waiter for more coffee instead of kindly asking. Why does this happen? How can it be the kindness seems more and more to be outdated? Don't we prefer to be treated kindly and politely ourselves, then why don't we render other people the same courtesy?

But how do we know, which values of the past are still worth adopting? I guess this is one of the most difficult questions ever and everyone has to answer it for themselves. Our parents have given us the values they considered important and it is our duty to carefully question them and maintain those important and let go of those outdated.

Also we need to consider values they may not have taught us, for example tolerance in many cases. Unfortunately this was not a virtue of past generations and this is, why it is up to us to make it a value of the future. We are the ones realizing its importance, developing it and passing it on to our children.

This is what makes us human beings, to become more that the generations before us, by holding on to their good parts and adding more of our own.