Intrinsic Worth
- November 4th, 2011
- Posted in Intelligibility
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This quote by Mr. Montag has been stuck in my head for a few weeks:
My sense of equality is an ideal. It’s FAKE. It does not obtain. Here it is nonetheless: No matter how powerful — regardless, even, of an individual’s utility to society — every person’s time is of equal value. That entrepreneurial ability, or test taking ability, or influence peddling ability are rewarded so much more richly than a strong back and a willingness to get dirty, is demented. The system of rewards is indeed a function of a demented religion of financial power. It is a system by which circumstance dictates whose potential will be fulfilled, and whose will lie dormant for lack of training or education or simply the lack of official sanction. Under such a system, circumstance always favors established power, and gatekeepers and nepotists reign.
You can read the rest of his post here.
I agree with him. As I think he has said elsewhere, money is FAKE. So it follows that the accumulation of wealth and one’s ability to generate material abundance has absolutely no relation to the worth or value of the individual. None. Not one iota. This is in keeping, in my view, to the radical notion that individual autonomy (self-ownership and direction) is the overarching, guiding principle for the conduct of relations between human beings (and possibly to other creatures).
Is it fake though? Does it truly not obtain, as he says? If the trappings of human society, and the conventions that are used to transact human relations (including the distribution of goods) happen to be based on a contrived or perverted set of values, that doesn’t invalidate the definition of equality that he describes.
The question is, does it follow that we are obliged to remedy this inequality? That is, if you happen to have been rewarded (under this system) for the accident of being born a white male in the west, is there a moral obligation to diminish yourself in some way? Or is this merely an example of moral luck? It’s not a question about charity. It’s a question about value.
Some folks have that thing called “conscience” beaten out of them as kids… beaten out of them, or worked out of them by parental example being followed, or taught out of them by parental instruction and guidance.
This is very common. It’s why you see that stark arrogance in someone like Dubya Bush or Barack Obama, the prideful disdain toward all who do not agree with him. We are truly post-racist when Obama can be as patricianly disdainful as Poppy’s Boy.
For the person whose conscience is intact and childhood relatively safe and loving, native advantage brings obligation to help others.
I think most people seeking and gaining power didn’t have safe and loving childhoods, though.
Otherwise, Montag’s theme and your discussion of it remind me of my shock in HS when I realized certain girls would only date football players… as if being a football player was some magical suggestion of total superiority as a human. Strangely the guys who played baseball and basketball and soccer, and especially the guys who did track and field, didn’t have the same Boyfriend Advantage the footballers held.
It was all fake. Apparently these girls learned it from their mothers, who also idolized boys who played football. That’s the nearest I could figure.
nice! i have plenty to add, but it’ll take a post or two to build up to it. this will be the push i needed to get working on it. thanks!
Hello all, i recently saw a special on the story of steve jobs, yes the titan of Apple computer. 13 minutes into the hour long special i turned off the TV in pure resentment. what had this man done that i had not? was my existence equal to his? did i matter? was i not a blip on the universal radar (GOD, first principle, et fucking cetera!!!) as was he. in am a lowly SQL developer working for a very old skool AUTO insurance company in Orange county, CA. LOL!!!! The truth is, my view of the truth, what I have posited, and we all posit, as “ARTISTS” OR NOT, is our truth. I concur with the author…. we are equal….not in the eyes of men/women…humans…but in the eyes..ears…of that THING….which came of nothing and is all. Don’t ask me to define it yet….lol!!!!!! Another good one……this task may take me to the grave. Love you free thinkers and back to the salt mines- Manny