Life seems to be everlasting, because it is all we ever experience. Like everything else, for each of us, it ends. We dole out our lives in dinner parties and plane flights, and it’s over before we know it. We lose everyone we love, if they don’t lose us first, and every single thing we do is intended to distract…
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Value for Sunday of Week 20 in the season of Growth
Fulfilling Duty toward Others
A core commitment to everyone’s intrinsic worth implies duties to other people – to other living beings.
- We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense. [Barack Obama]
- In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty. [attributed to Augustine]
- . . . the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. [Florence Nightingale]
We are at the responsibility stage of development, a step ahead of not doing harm and a step behind moral excellence. It is the stage of moral competence, or duty.
Real
True Narratives
- Lynn Tillman, Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence (Soft Skull, 2022): “. . . for some people and some relationships, caregiving will always feel like a burden, no matter how assiduously one might try to manage it.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Some people have recognized the importance of values education beginning at an early age.
- Angela Uchoa Branco & Maria Cláudia Lopes-de-Oliveira, eds., Alterity, Values, and Socialization: Human Development Within Educational Contexts (Springer, 2018).
- Emiliano Bosio & Maria Guajardo, eds., Value-Creating Education: Teachers’ Perception and Practice (Routledge, 2024).
- Ron Scapp, Teaching Values: Critical Perspectives on Education, Politics, and Culture (Routledge, 2003).
- Wayne Melville & Donald Kerr, eds., Virtues as Integral to Science Education: Understanding the Intellectual, Moral, and Civic Value of Science and Scientific Inquiry (Routledge, 2020).
- Estelle R. Jorgensen, Values and Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2021).
- Books in the Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy series are found on Google Books at this link, and on Amazon at this link.
- Books in the Routledge Citizenship, Character and Values Education series are found on Google Books at this link, and on Amazon at this link.
- Journal of Beliefs & Values
- The Journal of Values Education
- The Journal of Value Inquiry
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Three Books of Offices, or, Moral Duties (44 BCE).
Social competence, i.e., the ability to and practice of relating to others, is a recognized field in the discipline of social work.
- H. Schneider, Grazia Attili, Jacqueline Nadel and Roger P. Weissberg, eds., Social Competence in Developmental Perspective (Springer, 1989).
- Sara J. Salmon, Empathy and Social Competence Training: Preparing Curriculum Implementation Guide (Research Press, 2015).
- Ian Hutchby and Jo Moran-Ellis, eds., Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Action (Routledge, 1998).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
For some people, compassion and service arise out of a sense of duty. In this scene, a priest has witnessed a group of people heartlessly mocking a mis-shapen child – Quasimodo.
For several minutes, a young priest had been listening to the reasoning of the Haudriettes and the sentences of the notary. He had a severe face, with a large brow, a profound glance. He thrust the crowd silently aside, scrutinized the “little magician,” and stretched out his hand upon him. It was high time, for all the devotees were already licking their chops over the “fine, flaming fagot.” “I adopt this child,” said the priest. He took it in his cassock and carried it off. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Volume I, Book Fourth, Chapter I, “Good Souls”.]
Novels:
- Mary Gordon, Payback: A Novel (Pantheon, 2020) is a complex novel about what we owe to others.
- Avni Doshi, Burnt Sugar: A Novel (Overlook, 2021): a woman cares for her ailing and abusive mother.
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Conductor Seiji Ozawa “was never a natural genius: his success has been the fruit of hard work and continuous study. Those who know him say that he is affable, filled with love for his fellow man, and mindful of duty.” Here are links to his playlists, and of Ozawa conducting live.
Pietro Locatelli’s (1695-1764) L’Arte del Violino, Op. 3 (1733) (approx. 230’) (list of recorded performances), is a set of twelve baroque violin concerti. These are journeyman works, of great beauty all the same. The soloist’s relation to the orchestra and its players is consistently respectful and aware.
- Concerto No. 1 in D Major (approx. 21’)
- Concerto No. 2 in C minor (approx. 22’)
- Concerto No. 3 in F Major (approx. 21’)
- Concerto No. 4 in E Major (approx. 19’)
- Concerto No. 5 in C Major (approx. 16’)
- Concerto No. 6 in G minor (approx. 15’)
- Concerto No. 7 in B-flat Major (approx. 19’)
- Concerto No. 8 in E minor (approx. 19’)
- Concerto No. 9 in G Major (approx. 18’)
- Concerto No. 10 in F Major (approx. 14’)
- Concerto No. 11 in A Major (approx. 17’)
- Concerto No. 12 in D Major, “Il labirinto armónico” (The Harmonious Labyrinth) (approx. 18-22’)
Equally suited to this value are Locatelli’s Violin Sonatas (1737) (approx. 225’), composed for violin, cello and harpsichord: Op. 6 . . .
- Sonata No. 1 in B-flat Major (approx. 17’)
- Sonata No. 2 in F Major (approx. 18’)
- Sonata No. 3 in B Major (approx. 14’)
- Sonata No. 4 in E Major (approx. 14’)
- Sonata No. 5 in C minor (approx. 41’)
- Sonata No. 6 in D Major (approx. 18’)
- Sonata No. 7 in F minor (approx. 13’)
- Sonata No. 8 in C Major (approx. 16’)
- Sonata No. 9 in B minor (approx. 14’)
- Sonata No. 10 in G Major (approx. 17’)
- Sonata No. 11 in E-flat Major (approx. 14’)
- Sonata No. 12 in D minor (approx. 14’)
. . . and Op. 8 (1744) (approx. 70’):
- Sonata No. 1 in F Major for violin and continuo (approx. 16’)
- Sonata No. 2 in D Major for violin and continuo (approx. 10’)
- Sonata No. 3 in G minor for violin and continuo (approx. 13’)
- Sonata No. 4 in C Major for violin and continuo (approx. 14’)
- Sonata No. 5 in G Major for violin and continuo (approx. 19’)
- Sonata No. 6 in E-flat Major for violin and continuo (approx. 15’)
- Sonata No. 7 in A Major for 2 violins and continuo (approx. 12’)
- Sonata No. 8 in D Major for 2 violins and continuo (approx. 12’)
- Sonata No. 9 in F minor for 2 violins and continuo (approx. 13’)
- Sonata No. 10 in A Major for 2 violins and continuo (approx. 11’)
Felix Mendelssohn’s string quartets (list of recorded performances):
- String Quartet in E-flat Major (1823) (approx. 30’)
- String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 12, MWV R25 (1829) (approx. 23’) (list of recorded performances)
- String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, MWV R22 (1827) (approx. 30-34’) (list of recorded performances)
- String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1, MWV R30 (1838) (approx. 30-32’) (list of recorded performances)
- String Quartet No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 44, No. 2, MWV R26 (1827) (approx. 27-28’) (list of recorded performances)
- String Quartet No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 44, No. 3, MWV R28 (1828) (approx. 33-37’) (list of recorded performances)
- String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80, MWV R37 (1849) (approx. 25-28’) (list of recorded performances)
Other compositions:
- Raga Gunkali (Goonkali) is a Hindustani classical raag for early morning; “. . . a morning melody associated with the winter and Malkauns raga, intended to evoke a meditative, tranquil mood. It is a serious raga.” Performances are by Salamat Ali and Nazakat Ali Khan, Kishori Amonkar, Uday Bhawalkar, Jasraj, Shivkumar Sharma, and Kedar Bodas.
- Józef Elsner’s kind and unassuming string quartets, Op. 1 (approx. 63’)
- William Bland, Piano Sonata No. 18 in G minor (2010) (approx. 34’)
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Michael Jackson, “Heal the World” (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- Vincent van Gogh, Morning Going to Work (1890)
- Camille Corot, Ville d'Avray, The Heights, Peasants Working in a Field (c. 1865)
- Gustave Courbet, The Wheat Sifters (1854-55)
- Diego Velazquez, An Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618)
Film and Stage
- High Noon: Most people are unfamiliar with this classic Western’s subplot. The sheriff’s bride-to-be is a pacifist who leaves town when he resolves to stay and defend it.
- Seven Samurai: (Shichinin No Samurai) “Akira Kurosawa's epic tale concerns honor and duty during a time when the old traditional order is breaking down.” Modern viewers will notice how strongly the film’s perspective on ethical duty is tied to the culture of origin.
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