Weekly Technetic #22: Value and worth
We often speak of the value of a life, or of one's self-worth, but what does that really mean? From the technetic perspective, what is the value of a human being? More importantly, if there are differences from one human to another, how do we measure them, and how do we increase them?
Obviously, a human life has—rather, should have—no monetary price. To believe otherwise is to condone slavery, as it reduces to a commodity a member of the most intelligent, most advanced species to ever walk the earth. By the same token, measuring the value of a person by that person's net worth is nonsensical. Elon Musk might be the richest man in the Western world, but he is, as a human, no more valuable than the homeless men and women he facetiously claims he will bring into Twitter headquarters.
There are other ways to measure value, of course, and those range from the almost acceptable to the utterly ridiculous. A valuation based on material goods is no different from measuring the size of one's bank account; one is very much a proxy for the other. Another popular method involves counting sexual partners, although the scales are reversed for men and women, strangely enough. Adherence to an ideology, whether a true religion or the false dogma of the woke, also sees use as a yardstick.
But none of these truly measure our worth, because we are more than what we do, who we do, or what we think. And that is the technetic answer: as always, reality is complex.
One valid way to define ourselves as humans is by our contributions to humanity. That doesn't mean charity or social clout or anything of the sort. No, how do we contribute to our species, to its survival, advancement, and enlightenment? Are we creators, or destroyers? Do we share knowledge, seek out new things to teach them to others in turn? Do we make things better for those around us?
Some of this is physical. Saving the life of another, for instance, is an act of heroism that adds to the world. But we can also imagine mental contributions, such as scientific achievements, that provide a positive benefit to all. Even the spiritual might allow for greater value in this sense; many religious leaders use their positions to further humanity's causes.
We can also measure our contribution to the species in a very literal way: through reproduction. Though a little crude, this is perfectly acceptable in the technetic sense, as new life is the ultimate form of creation. And it even has some merit, for this scale places large, prosperous families—which typically have greater unity and are more protective of their cultural inheritance—ahead of deadbeat dads, internet sex addicts, and those who willingly sterilize themselves. As all of those can rightly be considered anti-human to some degree, there is some value to this way of quantifying value.
Most of all, however, our worth comes down in large part to what we believe it to be. A man who sees himself as being worth less than others will often take actions that express such a belief—I know this to be true from my own experience. Pride and ego do play a factor, and it's entirely possible to have an inflated sense of self-worth, but this is really only a bad thing when you've done nothing to deserve it. If you really have provided value to others, then you deserve to give yourself a pat on the back.
Most people haven't. That's the thing to keep in mind. Very few, in the grand scheme of things, have walked even the first steps, because it's so much easier to take than to give, to destroy rather than create. It's temptation, though not in the spiritual sense. This form of temptation leads us to tear down the creations of others, whatever form those creations take, and it therefore makes all of us worth a little less than we were.
That is what we must resist. Technetics must stand against those forces that would pull us into destruction or even simply stasis. Only then can we realize our true value as human beings.