{"id":3600,"date":"2026-03-14T00:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T00:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.joerivanveen.com\/blog\/?p=3600"},"modified":"2026-03-14T15:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T15:28:12","slug":"values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joerivanveen.com\/blog\/values\/","title":{"rendered":"It stung! Am I doing it wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog is not about photography. I\u2019m using photography as an excuse, because one of my core values is creativity<\/em>. Knowing your core values allows you to waste less energy on paths that are ultimately unfulfilling. This is not a sales pitch, you can\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Western societal values<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An acquaintance of mine bought a house for a million euros recently. This news stung me, I clearly felt it in my guts. The sting was short lived and not as violent as it might have been in the past, which I took as a sign of moderate maturation. Immediately after the sting I felt insecure about my own relative lack of material wealth and then self-conscious about the importance I, still, placed on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An expensive house is a symbol of living well, of being successful. But only in the context of a certain culture<\/em>. Symbols are impressed upon us from a very early age by the environment we grow up in. The Queen has a castle. The pop artist a mansion or two. The football player has a collection of hyper-cars. Extraordinary people who capitalised on it<\/em>. This extraordinariness that some rich people may have (had) is a reason why we think material wealth is deserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many extraordinary creative, honest, wise, patient, sportive, perceptive, insert your favourite adjective here, persons live in small apartments. But because wealth takes up so much space (more and bigger houses with bigger gardens, extravagant lifestyles), the materially wealthy people – and their stuff – is what we notice above all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later in life we recognise the symbols subconsciously. Only the attached meaning is presented to our consciousness, without context: a more expensive house means the person is more extraordinary than you. Hence the sting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one value to rule them all<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The notion that rich people are somehow better (meritocracy) is obviously a load of cr*p because it completely ignores differences in upbringing (rich parents vs child abuse), physical competencies that include brain wiring (healthy genius vs sickly dumbass), location (Silicon Valley vs Congo), etcetera. Spare me the story of the abused sickly dumbass from Congo that still became CEO and drives a Rolls: single outliers are routinely removed from datasets for a reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People with (too much) money and (perceived) interests conflicting with the well-being of everybody are working towards making human values more wealth-based by denying for instance healthcare, education, transportation and fine things like healthy food and art to people who cannot pay. This is called capitalism: everything is a company that must make money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reforming our society thusly they take away focus from the pure values and put focus on the money you will need to live by them. Ingraining the concept that more material wealth is better deeper and deeper into our culture. This is the great decoy of the past century: money becoming an end, because it\u2019s the only means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your own values<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But, let\u2019s not get distracted! Instead let us make a culture together that is more aligned with human<\/em> values. To do this I think the only thing we need to do is live according to our own while we can. Which I have been trying to do for the previous decades, with varying success obviously. My values are currently (in order of significance \/ importance to me):<\/p>\n\n\n\n