Reflective thinkers and actors encounter values everywhere in their everyday professional and business lives – but their origins lie in culture and family. According to some rankings, the values of honesty, loyalty, reliability, and justice dominate in Germany.
Starting from the beautiful definition according to which values express what “should be” and values are “conceptions of what is desirable” (e.g. the Catholic Family Education Centre Westerwald/Rhein-Lahn in the Diocese of Limburg), a short, exemplary look back into my personal
History of values: At home, my family tried to teach me punctuality; playing soccer with friends almost every day as a child, I learned fairness; later, in German lessons, I was taught the value of tolerance.
The reality was this: In the mornings at school and almost logically afterwards at lunch, I was often and happily late. My greatest sporting idol, Diego Armando Maradona, scored one of his most important and famous goals with his hand in an extremely unfair way. At school alone, the
I think the teaching of values worked for me right away – but you can’t really misunderstand Lessing’s “ring parable” from “Nathan the Wise” and the understanding of tolerance it conveys, can you?
In Germany, parents, teachers/educators, and friends are considered the most important people who convey values and their meaning to others. Executives from commercial companies are listed only after leading politicians and religious figures—but ahead of pop or sports stars.
I can confirm this: I learned punctuality after friends and colleagues also taught me this value; I consider handball a violation of the rules that I despise – and I actively practice tolerance, although this is becoming increasingly difficult for me...
