Short answers, pulled from the story.
In ethics and the social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or an action, with the aim of determining which actions are best or what way of life is best. Values are described as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes, and they reflect a person's sense of right and wrong.
An instrumental value is worth having as a means toward something else that is good, such as a radio being instrumentally good for hearing music. An intrinsic value is worth having for itself, not as a means to anything further. The two are not mutually exclusive: some things, such as understanding science, are described as both intrinsically worthwhile and useful for achieving other goods.
A protected value, also called a sacred value, is one that a person refuses to trade off no matter how large the benefit of doing so might be. Jonathan Baron and Mark Spranca traced protected values to norms in deontological ethics, often associated with Immanuel Kant. Studies led by Scott Atran and Angel Gomez found that commitment to sacred values motivates the costliest sacrifices among what researchers call the most devoted actors.
S. H. Schwartz and psychology colleagues used empirical research to identify ten universal values: self-direction, stimulation, and hedonism; achievement and power; security, conformity, and tradition; and humility, benevolence, and universalism. Schwartz hypothesised that universal values relate to three types of human need: biological needs, social coordination needs, and needs tied to the welfare and survival of groups.
The Inglehart-Welzel cultural map plots countries along two dimensions: traditional versus secular-rational values, reflecting a transition from religious to scientific and bureaucratic worldviews; and survival values versus self-expression values, reflecting a transition from industrial to post-industrial society.
An idealized value system lists values with no exceptions and functions as an absolute code; those who hold it and claim no exceptions are called absolutists. A realized value system includes exceptions to resolve contradictions between values in practical circumstances, and is what most people use in daily life.