This Worth Thing

I have been reading the massive literary undertaking that is the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.  It is a massive (literally) undertaking in scope.  There are a couple of problems with the work, one being the execrable poetry that starts each chapter (I just skip it at this point), the other being the tendency for characters to spend a large amount of time philosophizing.

Now, for anyone who reads this blog there can be no doubt that I spend a fair amount of my time philosophizing.  This blog essentially has a philosophy.  I'm not against philosophizing, I can often enjoy it, but I'm not a huge fan of philosophy expressed by the majority of characters in a fantasy novel.

The good thing about this aspect of the book is that the different characters have somewhat different philosophies.  Erikson doesn't just just use repeated characters to spout the same ideas and beliefs.  However, there is a definite core to the whole thing.  On one side is the dark idea of humans never learning, repeating the folly of destroying each other and the environment around them.  The idea that everything is temporary, doomed to destruction, and the essential path of the world is a slow but inevitable spiral downwards.  The other side is that life is essentially ridiculous and so you should laugh at it, enjoy the little things, and concentrate on your relationships with others.

For me the most important philosophical moment in the book is when a character asks, "What about this worth thing?"  I think that's a very insightful question.

By far the most common use of the word, "worth" is of monetary value.  What is something worth?  It is worth what someone will pay for it, an exchange of something for anything that is considered to be an advantage.  We all know that people will pay different amount for different things.  The monetary value, what you will exchange for something, is subjective.  What it really comes down to is how you feel about an exchange.

The next most common use is the question, "Is it worth it?" with regard to doing something.  You might ask if it is worth going to college, or going to a concert, digging up the garden and planting vegetables.  This again is an exchange, time and effort for a result.

The final use of worth that I will discuss is the idea that a person has qualities that are highly esteemed.  It seems patently clear that this is the area that the question is addressing.  I can feel that someone is worthy of my love, my time, my admiration.  What does this mean?  It means that the person provides enough of something for us to provide something.  This concept of the worth of a person is most prevalent within cultures.  Martin Luther King is worth a day of commemoration in the United States, to remember his legacy, his sacrifice, how far we have come and how far we have to go.  In the United States no-one at all would think I am worthy of a national day of commemoration.  Society en masse can decide the worth of a person.

The thing is, different cultures and societies can value entirely different things.  A soldier who is killed in a conflict is often considered to have given his life to preserve the freedoms we enjoy.  He is considered to be of the highest worth by many.  Other people may consider the soldier a mindless automaton, willing to travel to foreign countries to kill innocent people for the benefit of corporations.  The same behavior, different concepts of worth.  A religious leader who exhorts his followers to live a certain life, and despise a different life can be viewed as a great man by his followers, and be thought of as less than useless by those who disagree with his position.  A person can dedicate their life to achieving personal bliss and serenity, sitting on a mountain top being fed by the local community.  He can be thought worthy of the title of saint, or he can be thought of as a selfish sponger, living off the goodwill of fools when he should be doing something useful.  Those in the USA and those in Bhutan have a very different idea of a worthy life.

Society can put a value on someone, what they are worth, but so can individual people, and most significantly with regard to themselves.  A person can think themselves worthy of respect and love, or worth nothing.  Such a view of oneself can be the most important concept in a life, in fact the difference between life and death.

We have seen that this "worth thing" is an evaluation of people, but an evaluation based on what?  We value the worth of an object by what other objects we are willing to exchange for it (money is an agreed representation of objects).  We value the worth of an activity by how much time, energy (and potential objects) we are willing to put forth for the results of that activity.  Work is a voluntary exchange of time and effort for future opportunities for stuff and activities.  The worth of a person is the value that they bring to a society.  Martin Luther King is worth something for changing our ideas of race, making society a better place. 

How we decide the worth of a person largely depends on the culture in which we grew up.  For most of us the concept of worth is pre-programed into our minds.  In a culture based on fairness, hard-work, and materialism a man who sits in a field trying to be as happy as possible is a bum.  In a Buddhist monastery the man teaching the seven secrets of success is wasting his life and ruining others by preaching that success and money makes the world a better place.  For Buddhists a person trying the best they can to be as happy as possible increases the amount of happiness in a society.  In materialistic USA a hard-working person with ambition and drive, who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps, adds value to society by creating jobs, putting more money into the economy, being an example, not being a drain on society.

My mother said to me, "Don't care what anybody else thinks" about the experience of being a man staying at home doing chores in Texas.  Local society doesn't think much of such people, they feel I don't have much worth.  Caring about what other people think doesn't help me under such circumstances.  It engenders low self-esteem, guilt, and therefore makes me less happy.  I don't judge the worth of someone by how hard they work or what trials they have have endured.  Why do I care about the opinions of others?  I care because we are social creatures.  There are almost no people who simply don't care about the views of others.

"What about this worth thing?"  This is one of the very few posts in which I don't have an answer that simplifies and explains.  This worth thing is complex.  It intertwines individual and culture, values and freedom.  It is an invention of the human mind, like rights, justice, patriotism.  It can change over time, place and situation.  I don't think I can say more than this worth thing is worth thinking about, evaluating, measuring ourselves again.  It may be that the answer to those thoughts is that the concept of worth doesn't really matter, or that it does more harm than good, or it is the root upon which our whole lives are based.

In my opinion it is worth trying to be happy, both for yourself and for the wider community.  I think that thinking about the worth of others, even the worth of yourself doesn't help much in being happy.