Value is More Than $

I feel that it is necessary to point out something obvious that seems to be drifting from our collective perspective. Value is more than just a monetary concept. 

We live in a society that is predominately concerned with the economy and exponential growth. It is indeed necessary for a global society to have systems for resource allocation. It is also important to not be completely captured by this notion of value. 

To find spaces of respite from the money-centric aspects of our society is getting much more difficult. Our lives are becoming increasingly entangled with screens, social media, and artificial intelligence. As this continues we are giving even more agency to the powerful levers of control that have the sole goal of pushing this value narrative of money above all else.

Mostly these tools pull us further away from the intrinsic values of our existence. By this I mean real in-person connection to our fellow humans, actual engagement in our community, the inspiring awe of the natural world, and a slew of other evolved aspects of our species that developed over millennia.

This trend of putting money at the top of the value hierarchy is not new. The tools to amplify this agenda are just much more powerful now than they have ever been. From my perspective, this could be a major cause of our collective sense of unease and anxiety. That anxiety manifests in different ways and has many different faces, but we all feel it to some degree. 

Ultimately this causes something deeply rooted within us to start panicking. I believe the rise in mental disorders and our tendency towards extremism is a consequence of giving away more of our attention and agency to these synthesized forms of reality.

Value is found in so much more of this existence than what can be recognized in monetary forms. To some, the only value seen from a fish or a tree is when that thing is no longer living. Meaning that the natural value of the fish or tree is overlooked for the monetary value of the meat or lumber it would yield. A dead fish and a dead tree certainly have monetary value, but I fear that is the only value that is recognized by some, perhaps many, of us.

A system reliant on infinite growth will eventually fail in a finite environment. Such is the case with our planet and our concept of value. It is estimated that if the full population of the planet matched the consumption habits of the average American then we’d need 4 planets to satiate that demand. Quantifying such a thing is difficult to do without controversy. However, this does point to the way in which most of us understand value.

I think the majority of us haven’t even been presented with an alternative to the concept of value. Most of us have grown-up within a culture of advertisements and consumerism. In an environment where we measure our achievement largely in monetary terms. We perceive life as a striving towards a set of numbers that will allow us to live the lifestyle that we’ve determined is right for us. 

But what we value will dictate, or at least strongly influence, the lifestyle we desire. If we’ve been raised in an environment that always seemed to equate value with only money then how could we even consider an alternative? Undoubtedly, a few folks with a predisposition for curiosity will reject the status quo and search for conceptual alternatives to the money-centric value system. They are almost assuredly also in the minority. Most of us model just our lifestyle on the culture and customs of where we were raised. 

The few that do follow that curious and wandering spirit risk being ostracized by their community. So in this modern era of consumerism, most of us have just accepted this perception of value as being strictly monetary. We choked down our doubts like a 5-year-old choking down their broccoli. 

Past generations seemed to value things such as duty, courage, integrity, intelligence, ambition, ingenuity, and hard-work – to name only a few among many. I see little of that being valued currently. Mostly I see those with material wealth being lauded as people we should aspire to. They can even be assumed to possess the above virtues solely because of their ability to accumulate material wealth.

What we value in the short-term could end up severely diminishing, or even eliminating, what we’ve valued to this point as a species. We may leave little of purity or inherent value to our future generations if we continue on this narrow path of value. If we continue to only value that which can produce a possible positive fiscal outcome then I fear we will lose much of what it actually means to be human.

Please look out for your fellow humans. I hope you’ve found value in this and appreciate your attention. Thanks for reading.