VALUES ("teachings" or mi'yp) and PRINCIPLES: the BONES (the underlying forces) - Values - teachings (what Clifford Geertz calls, a "model for" one's actions or "ethos") significantly contribute to the make-up and disposition of the specific symbols of a story. A story is also given its very reality based upon more fundamental ontological principles, principles upon which "reality" is itself constructed and perpetuated. Or re-phrased, the symbols of a story are expressive of the underlying values, teachings and principles of a story, collectively known as the "bones" of a story.
Values - "teachings" mi'yp can be defines as learned, relatively enduring, emotionally charged, epistemologically grounded and represented, moral conceptualizations, that assist us in making judgments and in preparing us to act.
1. All values/teachings are learned.
2. Values/teachings are relatively enduring.
3. Values/teachings are not necessarily consciously known by either the individual or the society.
4. Values/teachings enshrine and impart a society's concepts of the morally desirable and ethically correct. Values and teachings are as road maps, laying out the territory and the bests paths to take, helping guide our choices in life.
5. Values/teachings are inundated with affective qualities - emotional feelings and are held with strong conviction.
6. Values/teaching establish a disposition to act.
7. Any given value/teaching is based upon and expressed in terms of certain epistemological criteria.
Ontological Principles refer to fundamental qualities and components that create and perpetuate the very fibers of what is considered reality, that is most real, what is experienced as existence and has being. They define how time and space are structured and composed.
Examples of ontological questions would be: is reality ultimately created by material or spiritual forces? Is my being an indistinguishable participant of existence, subjectively interwoven within it, or can I stand back from the world and view it from afar, objectively?
Indigenous experiences are premised on spiritually animation and monism, among other ontological principles, resulting in reality as the transitory intersection of those participating, an event of interrelationships.
Together, the values ("teachings") and principles make up the "Bones" of a story - the underlying forces and currents that usher forth and manifest a story.