People Have No Values

Values don't cause behavior. Behavior causes values. People who grow up in different nations think they have different values when they merely have different situations that lead them to produce different behaviors. Then, they adopt different values to rationalize their behaviors as morally commendable.

Consider Indians who use obedience as a moral virtue to explain why they allow their parents to ruin their lives by dictating what they should study in college and what they should be in life. They hate that they have to put up with the education system. They hope for reforms but their hopes are doomed. The reason they are trapped is not that Indian parents act like children but that they are financially dependent on them. In a free economy, unemployment can be reduced to a level where young adults who don’t like education can quit it and enter the workforce. This would allow them to disagree with their parents. What they call their moral value of obedience is nothing but a rationalization for their inability to rebel.

This is not to say that no one has any values. Children are value-driven. As they grow up, they become greedy. Then, they are driven by self-interest. On the path of self-interest, they come up with moral values to rationalize their wrongdoings. They shouldn't do it though. They should repent. There are very few who are value-driven as adults. These few people lead society morally.