Thread: Mr. Manuscript

You know what? Fuck it. Deserved Value I've been told a lot of things recently about what people deserve, what people are worth. The universe doesn't care what anyone thinks anyone deserves. Do you think people deserve what happens to them? Do the greater proportion of the women on this site and in the world deserve the rape or molestation that's been given them? God must like vacuum and rape because He sure made a hell of a lot of both. Did the dinosaurs deserve extinction? If we all got what we deserved as people and citizens and what have you, there'd be no want, no war, no sorrow. But the universe doesn't operate on deserve. It operates on... well, physics, but you can argue that it operates on competition. Atoms drawn together from competing gravity sources which will be a star, which will be a planet? The competition determines it. Plants compete for light, animals compete for survival. People compete for attention, or money or any of the billion other desires that people are prone to. The six billion desires, every instant of every day. And people are fucked up and people are stupid. Even intelligent people spend a good portion of their day basically being stupid, if not intellectually than emotionally. Thank God people are also lazy, so the stupidity is mostly spent sitting around. But people are stupid and crazy and so they compete for stupid, crazy things. And if they get their crazy, stupid, bad-idea things, do they deserve them? The concept of deserve has no place in nature there is no deserve quark in your atoms, no deserve allele in your genetic matrix. It's a purely human concept, as alien to the universe as compassion and trade deficit. And yet we have all of these concepts, and they rule our lives in a very great degree. I'm not a big fan of determining what people deserve, because I recognize it's a human concept, and I recognize that all human concepts are at heart fallible, prone to corruption and inherently, absolutely affected by personal taste. There is an objective reality as to the composition of my computer monitor the elements and components are known, identifiable, reproducible. There is no objective reality to Justice. There is no universal set standard for Good. And there is no single yardstick to determine what people Deserve. We have, of course, social rules in common, our personal concepts are shaped by the environment in which we are raised and the rules that we encounter as we develop. Nurture and experience. But at the heart of it is the truth that it's just as much a nonphysical value judgment as anything else, and nonphysical value judgments are always individual and personal. Therefore it's not up to me to decide what people deserve. I'm not qualified. I'm not a universal observer with the knowledge of everything that makes up a person. There was a story I read about this murderer who dies and goes to heaven, and he's not judged by God, you see. God is instead called as the Prime Witness. And while the dead-human judges confer after God's testimony, the murderer is left alone momentarily with God, and asks him why they're judging him, and not God. And God tells him about the marble he lost when he was five, and how he cried when his mother died, and what he felt the first time he committed a crime, the sickness and revulsion. God can't judge, you see, because God sees the totality, and God loves. To know someone that intimately is to have to love that someone, and therefore to be unable to judge. And I can't know anyone like that. And I'd have to, to know what they deserve, what motivations govern their actions both good and bad. But I can't. Therefore, in good conscience, I can't judge, and I can't decide what people deserve. And what people deserve is also intrinsically linked to their worth. I have a serious problem with the idea that some people are worth more than others. On the societal level, that's the basis of every discriminatory practice in the world this person isn't worth as much as this other person, so it's OK to subjugate or kill them. On the personal level, worth is even more blatantly a nonphysical value judgment than deserve. Every single argument I have made as regards deserve is also applicable to worth, and there's more, besides. People get into trouble when they decide they deserve too much, like it doesn't matter what other people think or have, I deserve to have it, so I'll take it from them. And people get into trouble when they decide they deserve too little. But a lot of that is also tied to worth. Self-worth or the value that others put on you, worth is just a judgment. And everybody's got their own criteria for what's worthy, what counts. Is it skin color? Economic background? Ideas about society? Personal value to the observer in question? Doesn't matter it'll be different for the next person who comes along. And just like I don't have the right to say you deserve this or you don't deserve this because I'm not qualified to judge, I'm also not qualified to tell someone their worth, or the worth of anyone else. I do it all the time, of course a friend has a problem with an ex, and I tell them he's not worth it. Because the guy has demonstrated his inability to behave like a rational caring person, so in my view, he's not worth wasting thought on, since it won't help anything. When I tell someone about someone else's worth, the implication at the end is always by my value system. And that's fine, that's expected. But I'm not qualified to push my value system on anyone else. I can't invade a country and say this is what values you work for, now this is what's worth it for you. I can't expect anyone else to agree with my value system my friend may still moon over her ex and cause herself stress. And that's her right, because she's looking at qualities I don't see, qualities I can't see. I may disagree, but it's not my place to impose, because it's not my value system she's using, and it's not my right to impose it. I try to convince people all the time, of course that's a natural human tendency, to try to get people to think like you do, alongside you. Grouping and social dynamics at work, perhaps. But I don't impose, and I try not to judge. I can't. It's not my life, it's not my mind, it's not my place. I do have my own standards, though. And they're fucked up and stupid, because humanity is fucked up and stupid, and much as I dislike the fact, I too am human, with all the fallibility and mistakes and sheer idiocy that comes along with that. And I have been idiotic, oh yes. But my values remain in place, and despite the pig-headedness of my day-to-day existence, I stick to my values. They're fucked up and wrong and people will not understand, because they're not coming from my life and my history, but they're mine, and they've served me reasonably well these two-score years. But maybe it's just pointless, anyway. Because not everybody has the same restraint as I do, and I'm as much subject to others' value systems as anyone. Ultimately, we are all potential victims of each others' whims, on the internet particularly. And the universe doesn't care about that, either. EDIT Crap, I had a whole thing about the hypocrisy of Ayn Rand to work into the worth section, and I forgot about it completely. I should make notes next time instead of just writing freehand...