Intrinsic Value

A couple of social media posts today reminded me of the Value of things.  In animism, all things have an intrinsic value that is, in essence, immune to the arbitrary assignment of value. My Lady for instance, is someone in my life that I have a great admiration and respect for, I Love my Son as well.  My appreciation of these people is an arbitrary assignment of value on my part, albeit based on the intrinsic value of those involved.  I am placing value on them because I have personal feelings about their nature that are based on their own assessments of their personal value.  Intrinsic value is a measure of self worth.  For instance, my Lady is a very self empowered woman so she has a good measure of her own self worth.  As my son grows into adulthood, I hope that he too will maintain the measure of his own self worth as well.  Anyone who doesn't think a two year believes that they are the the most valuable commodity in the known universe has never had to take a toy away from them.  The question I feel that is an important measure of value is which is more important?  Intrinsic value or Arbitrary value?

Most people I can think of would agree that Intrinsic value is by far the more important of the two but it also seems to me that while most people agree, not many of them appear to actually act as though their intrinsic value is their true measure.  I have mentioned before that we are social animals and one thing that is true of social animals is that we tend to seek the approval of others in our social group.  In High School it was called "Peer Pressure" but what it actually amounts to is a measure of the balance between arbitrary value and intrinsic value.  It is sad to say that peer pressure can test the limits of almost anyone because the drive to be accepted by others in our peer group can be overwhelming and often, intrinsic value fails to triumph over the desire to win that acceptance.  As a general rule, conformity is what causes us to lose sight of our intrinsic value. I would posit that loss of vision is by far, one of the most pressing issues in our culture.  In essence, there are people who simply cannot, for one reason or another, conform to the expectations of our culture.  This is most readily apparent in the context of body image.  When you are able to divorce yourself from the context that how you look has something to do with your intrinsic value, you are much less likely to suffer from things like depression and anxiety.  Inversely, those that impose cultural expectations on themselves in terms of body image but are unable to conform, often have greatly increased depression and anxiety.  For them, the cultural expectation of physical appearance allows them to believe that their intrinsic value is less than that of someone else who does or is able to conform.

I had a girlfriend many years ago that I cared for very much and I imagined myself making a life with her.  We lived together for about a year when she decided to have Gastric bypass surgery.  Now, I can say without any reservation that yes, she was full figured and I believe she was incredibly attractive as is.  I fell in Love with her long before the surgery and Loved her long after it was over.  She on the other hand, had lost sight of her intrinsic value to the point that, the day she had the surgery, she told me that once she was thin she would want to find a "cuter" boy.  At the time, I was hovering around 300lbs myself and this was a massive blow to me.  The idea that all she needed to find someone "cuter" than me was to slim down, says a lot about what she believed her intrinsic value to be.  Even though, at that time, I hadn't ever put much thought into intrinsic vs arbitrary value, I had a lingering idea of it and I knew that my intrinsic value was greater than the arbitrary value she assigned me.

The point of this example is that I place more emphasis upon intrinsic value than arbitrary value because I myself have felt how awful it is to have someone I care about deeply fail to recognize it in me.  We can always tell people who cannot recognize their own intrinsic value because they often feel they must prop it up by hating and despising other people for ridiculous or made up reasons.  Those reasons usually have more to do with the level of desperation that they feel in not being able to locate their own intrinsic value and so they compensate for that by assigning arbitrary and often negative, values to others. 

What I try to do is relate my arbitrary assessment of value based upon a person's intrinsic value.  This can be an incredibly difficult task because a person's intrinsic value is often muddied by the arbitrary value placed on them by others.  The only way to cut through this in most cases is to build a relationship with them.  The thing that is hard to face is that the assignment of arbitrary value is a judgement.  If I consider someone to be an asshole, then I am making an arbitrary assignment of their value as it relates to me.  The same can be true if I decide that they are a great person.  Another thing that I find is problematic for our culture is that we often assign these arbitrary values, based not upon the relationship we form with people but upon details that may have no real effect on intrinsic value at all.  Things like race, faith, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity have intrinsic value only to the individuals that identify themselves in this way.  The arbitrary assignment of values, the judgments of those who do not share these traits and therefore have no personal stake in them, is likely reacting out of a need to judge others because they are unable to make an estimate of their own intrinsic value.  In essence, things like same sex marriage and race don't bother me because, in essence, they have no immediate negative effect upon my life.  Adversely, getting to know people and their understanding of their own intrinsic value buy building relationship may have profound, positive effects on my life.  Therefore  arbitrary value placed on groups of people generalizes their appraisal to the point that the individual co-opts their opportunity to create relationship.  One of the things that makes prejudice of all kinds such a pervasive problem is that it does just that.  It arbitrarily assigns value to an entire group of people based upon a set of standards that  make no allowance for their intrinsic value.  In a culture that makes every attempt to co-opt self empowerment in lieu of conformity, people tend to confuse intrinsic value with arbitrary values placed upon them by those who have no right or basis for criticism.  Prejudice does not only undermine the ability to seek intrinsic value but also oppresses it.

It is my humble opinion that we need to stop assigning blame upon others for our failure to accept ourselves  and instead make it a staple for our culture to make allowance for self expression and intrinsic value.  The best method of reaching that goal in my opinion, is to interact with others, build relationships and stop making assumptions about individuals and entire groups of people based on arbitrary judgements.