This Is Our Story

This is Our Story

Humanity United in Action,
Driven By Love and Compassion,
Informed by Science and Reason.

Value for Friday of Week 24 in the season of Ripening

Rewarding

British Nobel prize winners' dinner photo

A reward is something that accrues to someone by accomplishment or recognition.

  • The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on. [Barack Obama]
  • Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege. [attributed to Abraham Maslow]
  • One of the rewards of success is freedom, the ability to do whatever you like. [variously attributed]


Though Pavlovian reward and punishment is not a humanistic model for treatment of humans, people do like being rewarded for accomplishments and generally exhibit a favorable response. The concern is that we do not wish to treat people in an undignified manner. Still, we are animals, and we do respond to favorable and unfavorable stimuli. Stripped of its characterizations and value judgments, an appropriate human reward is not given immediately but after a sufficient time has passed so that the reward accounts for the independence and dignity of the recipient. To what extent are we merely fooling ourselves? I leave that question for another day, or to others.

Real

True Narratives

Technical and Analytical Readings

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

For a musician, a solo in an honor – a reward for excellence. We have a wealth of concerti and other compositions that feature solos but Antonio Vivaldi was prolific in his compositions that featured a solo performer. The Naïve label has produced an extensive series highlighting this work:

Music: songs and other short pieces

Visual Arts

Film and Stage

This Is Our Story

A religion of values and Ethics, driven by love and compassion, informed by science and reason.

PART ONE: OUR STORY

First ingredient: Distinctions. What is the core and essence of being human? What is contentment, or kindliness, or Love? What is gentleness, or service, or enthusiasm, or courage? If you follow the links, you see at a glance what these concepts mean.

PART TWO: ANALYSIS

This site would be incomplete without an analytical framework. After you have digested a few of the examples, feel free to explore the ideas behind the model. I would be remiss if I did not give credit to my inspiration for this work: the Human Faith Project of Calvin Chatlos, M.D. His demonstration of a model for Human Faith began my exploration of this subject matter.

A RELIGION OF VALUES

A baby first begins to learn about the world by experiencing it. A room may be warm or cool. The baby learns that distinction. As a toddler, the child may strike her head with a rag doll, and see that it is soft; then strike her head with a wooden block, and see that it is hard. Love is a distinction: she loves me, or she doesn’t love me. This is true of every human value:

justice, humility, wisdom, courage . . . every single one of them.

This site is dedicated to exploring those distinctions. It is based on a model of values that you can read about on the “About” page. However, the best way to learn about what is in here is the same as the baby’s way of learning about the world: open the pages, and see what happens.

ants organic action machines

Octavio Ocampo, Forever Always

Jacek Yerka, House over the Waterfall

Norman Rockwell, Carefree Days Ahead

WHAT YOU WILL SEE HERE

When you open tiostest.wpengine.com, you will see a human value identified at the top of the page. The value changes daily. These values are designed to follow the seasons of the year.

You will also see an overview of the value, or subject for the day, and then two columns of materials.

The left-side column presents true narratives, which include biographies, memoirs, histories, documentary films and the like; and also technical and analytical writings.

The right-side columns presents the work of the human imagination: fictional novels and stories, music, visual art, poetry and fictional film.

Each entry is presented to help identify the value. Open some of the links and experience our human story, again. It belongs to us all, and each of us is a part of it.

latest from

The Work on the Meditations

AI buffer

CHAPTER 4: The DEMOCRATIC (R)EVOLUTION We are better than we realize we are. For the first time, we can now create institutions of governance that elicit our best. Copyright 2026 by Paul L. LaClair

BEING EMPATHETIC

Empathy begins the process of connecting us with others, as we share their emotions. Our own life experience enables us to understand something of the life experience of others. That emotional understanding is the distinction we call empathy: “. . . the capacity to share the feelings of others . . .” “Empathy is a complex capability enabling individuals to…
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Wish Fulfillment

Believing things to be true because one wishes them to be true is a prime malady of the human condition. It is an opposite of objectivity, reflecting a shortfall of intellectual honesty. It has led to wars, famines and other guarantors of human suffering.

Hopelessness

Hopelessness is a dark view of the future, in which there is no escape from unhappiness and suffering.

Living in Dignity

Properly understood, dignity refers to a high state of ethical/moral attainment and behavior. If human worth is the intrinsic life experience, then what is human dignity? In this model, it is the global term for being excellently developed in all three domains of being in a way that enhances human worth. Its elements are caring (emotion), wisdom (thought) and courage…
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Cycles – Seasons

Life is cyclical. There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity . . . [The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1.] Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something’s time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a great metaphor…
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Mutuality – Reciprocity – Cooperation

Low-level interpersonal relationships are essentially transactional. Mere reciprocity, or cooperation, does not imply any good feeling toward others. People who do not otherwise get along can cooperate to achieve a common end or purpose. Early experiments in game theory, particularly in the prisoner’s dilemma, revealed that repeated interactions between members of a community, of as few as two people, were…
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