Capitalized Abstract Nouns

On Facebook, Marcello Herreshoff posted a list of Capitalized Abstract Nouns that people believe in. Marcello provided it as a resource for an exercise to help individuals explicate their own preferences, but that exercise is not my main interest here. My aim to form a taxonomy of things that people believe in, working off of Marcello's list.

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Conditions: People believe in preferred conditions of individual existence such as {innocence, dignity, strength, health, and freedom} and conditions of collective existence, such as {equity, order, accountability, and justice}. Also, people believe in beauty, which might be a preferred condition of reality, independent of the existence of people. Asserting a belief in these is perhaps asserting that the audience should also value the conditions.

Standards: People believe in behavioral standards or procedures (both individual & collective) such as {decency, fairness, honesty, efficiency, cleanliness, discipline, faith, and patience}. Statements of belief in these are partly assertions of their terminal value, and partly assertions of their instrumental efficacy in obtaining good conditions.

Agents: People believe in particular agents (individual & collective) such as {god, nature, human society, America, the American military, the global market, Whatever Inc, Senator Whomever, and themselves}. Belief in these is mostly about the ability of the agent to obtain good conditions, and partly about the ethical behavior of the agent, and a little bit about the terminal value of the agent's existence.

People believe in non-particular agents also, such as {family, friends, volunteers, patrons, citizens, stewards, and leaders}. Saying "I believe in family" means something very close to "I believe in the value of the relational behavioral standard of kinship," but I've decided to make this a separate category from believing in the other behavioral standards like decency, fairness, and honesty.

Projects: People believe in projects, movements, and social systems, such as {the reformation, open source software, democracy, feudalism, the war on drugs, and miscegenation} Belief in these is a lot like belief in particular agents.

People believe in bodies of knowledge and procedure, such as {education, medicine, tradition, law, and functional programming}. These are more like the behavioral standards.

Dunno: The last one I really care about categorizing is "The Future". Is that like believing in a particular narrative, as in "I believe in the virgin birth of Christ"? Or is the future conceived of as an agent bringing about desirable conditions? Or is the future thought of as desirable condition itself, like beauty? Or is the future a non-particular collective project, like believing in revolution? Maybe it's the normal kind of belief, and people are just saying that the future exists. Probably not that one, but I don't know.

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SO THEN: People believe in good things, good lives, good conduct, good people and institutions and social roles, good projects, and maybe things in whatever category The Future belongs to. Riveting.