From "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy:
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Many of us yearn to be of use, to give, to give abundantly – to our loved ones and to the people we live with, to colleagues we work with and organizations we work for, to the communities we belong to and the societies we are members of, to the cities or towns or villages we inhabit and to the districts or boroughs or counties we live in and countries we are citizens of, to humankind in general and the world at large. These are people who realize their self-worth through their contributions, imagining that they are held in esteem as worthy individuals due to the work they’ve done, good deeds they’ve performed.
Then there are those of us who take, who take voraciously – from our loved ones and from the people we live with, from colleagues we work with and organizations we work for, from the communities we belong to and the societies we are members of, from the cities or towns or villages we inhabit and to the districts or boroughs or counties we live in and countries we are citizens of, from humankind in general and the world at large. These are people whose amour-propre is defined by their accomplishments, achievements and acquisitions, imagining that they are held in high regard as worthy individuals because of qualifications and degrees they have earned or records they’ve broken or prizes they’ve won or assets they have secured or resources they have marshalled under their command.
But what actually determines a person’s worth? Does it make sense to say that X is worth more than Y? Or less than Z? Words like “more” and “less” are classified as graded or comparative quantifiers. So is worthiness quantifiable?
An individual’s creditworthiness – to borrow a term from the banking industry – certainly is. It is carefully calibrated and measured by credit reporting agencies on a routine basis. The banking industry also uses quantitative terms to define a High Net-Worth Individual (abbreviated to HNWI). The life insurance industry applies actuarial science to calculate how much a human life is worth. Apparently, the financial services industry is clear on how to quantify an individual’s worth in financial terms. But speaking in more general terms, the question remains: what, if anything, determines a person’s worth?
Is it their wealth? Is an HNWI worth more than Middle-class Minakshi, solely on account of higher net worth? Is a business tycoon, with a net worth several hundred times higher than some garden-variety HNWI, worth more than that garden-variety HNWI?
Is it the power they wield? Is a Home Minister worth more than a common citizen? Is a President worth more than “Joe the plumber”? Is a cult leader worth more than his (it usually is a he/him) acolytes?
Does it have to do with race, roots or provenance? Some hold the view that all progress the world has made over the last several centuries is the direct result of the efforts of British and European thinkers, scientists, aristocrats and merchants, and more recently, American pioneers, industrialists and technocrats. If we were to take this view, do we infer that the privileged progeny of White European patricians/ capitalists/ landed gentry are worth more than the plebeian descendants of indigenous Americans or Australian aboriginals or enslaved People of Color brought to the West as indentured laborers or interned prisoners from Asia or Africa? Would there be movements like “Black Lives Matter” if indeed Black Americans were treated like their lives were worth as much as the lives of White Americans?
Does it have to do with nationality? Are U.S. citizens worth more than citizens of other countries? American media certainly seem to think so, going by their coverage of the loss of even a single American life in conflict zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, etc., compared to their coverage of horrific killings of thousands of innocent locals, including women and children, in those very same geographies.
Is it their intelligence quotient? Is a virologist working in an R&D lab of a life sciences company worth more than, say, a beauty pageant contestant, if we were to consider how many life-saving drugs might be produced based on that virologist’s work? What if the beauty pageant contestant is also a virologist? Would she then be worth more than Good-for-nothing Godfrey?
Is it age? Are children worth more than geriatrics, because children represent the future of our species and geriatrics are past their productive years and have nothing concrete left to offer the world?
Is it beauty? We are all programmed to attach a lot of importance to our physical appearance. So much so that those who suffer from some form of somatophobia or body dysmorphic disorder tend to have low self-esteem because they are convinced that they are not good-looking (or not good-looking enough). Are beautiful (by whatever standard) people worthier than ugly (by whatever standard) ones?
How about physical fitness? Is a world-famous soccer star at peak performance worth more than a flabby couch potato? Is someone who strives hard to be in “perfect” (by whatever standard) shape worth more than someone who doesn’t care to work out? Why do some of us fat-shame those who are even slightly overweight, knowing full well that doing so is an attack on their dignity and self-worth?
Is it their glamour quotient? Is a Hollywood celebrity worth more than, say, a frumpy clerk in the post office? Or even, say, a Bollywood extra? Glamour tabloids seem to have created a pecking order of the rich and the famous that, while fluid and constantly changing, provides at any given point in time a well-calibrated scale of celebs’ glamour quotient. Which is fine, but is it also a measure of their worthiness as human beings?
Is it the nature of work they do? Are those who provide essential services worth more than, say, hair-stylists? Surely the COVID pandemic has opened our eyes to how dependent we are on essential services workers. Are they worth more than the rest of us?
Is it their level of erudition, sagacity and wisdom? Would a present-day Avicenna or Aristotle be worth more than Average Avinash or Arif next door, considering the acuity of vision and insight such sages and scholars leave behind for posterity?
Is it creativity? Are musicians worth more than, say, tax auditors, considering how much joy their music brings to us? Are film-makers worth more than, say, archaeologists, since they make movies that entertain us?
How about innovativeness and entrepreneurship? Is the founder-CEO of a tech start-up scrambling in stealth mode to launch the Next Big Thing that will shift paradigms, disrupt industries etc., worth more than the janitor who mops the floors at the very business center where the fledgling venture has its offices?
Here’s a variation of the Trolley Problem:
Suppose you were asked to create an algorithm for an intelligent self-driving car to avoid crashing into pedestrians. Given a scenario in which the brakes have failed and the car, which is hurtling down a busy road, could either stay the course and hit someone crossing the street at a traffic light or swerve to the side where it is bound to runover someone on the sidewalk, how would you program the car? To complicate matters, what if it was an old, diseased, homeless junkie with a criminal record sprawled on the sidewalk, while at the traffic light there were four smart, successful, fit, attractive, young social entrepreneurs crossing the street on their way to an international conference on, say (and I’m just making this up), “Sustainable Technology Solutions For A Planet In Crisis”? Remember, there is no third option.
What would your criteria be, to decide who was worth saving and who wasn’t? Would you want to look at the contributions of these individuals to society and the utility of all that those individuals have produced? Would you want to scan criminal databases to assess whether a certain individual was a “bad apple” and therefore not worth saving? Is it, then, all going to boil down to the performance of deeds and their impact/ usefulness or lack thereof? How about applying intelligent analytics to estimate the potential value of the maximum good to the maximum number of people that we could hope to extract from a person in the future, and using that as a measure of their worth?
Is this performative, Utilitarian approach, then, the answer to our questions on worthiness? If that is indeed the case, then those who have successfully performed their various roles in the various communities they belong to, those who have demonstrated their usefulness to society as a whole, should be seen as worth more than those who have delivered less (or no) benefits or who have done more harm than good. Funnily this is pretty much how the world works. A debit/credit -like accounting system for good and bad performance, leading to a utilitarian assessment of a person’s worth. But does it have to be this way? Are there other ways of looking at worthiness?
Could it be that a person’s worth is not linked to their background or wealth or status or age or other attributes or behavioral history or utility that they represent? Could it be that a person’s worth has absolute primacy and is not determined by anything at all – not by good or bad behavior, not by the work they do or the value of what they create, not by their achievements or contributions to society, not by the charities they sponsor or support nor by the crimes they commit, not by any of their actions that others have either benefited or suffered from?
Could it be that worthiness is not measurable; that questions like who is worth more (or less) than whom are meaningless; that an old, diseased, homeless junkie with a criminal record is worth just as much as a smart, successful, fit, sexy, young tech-savvy innovator? Should we program our self-driving car to simply let the momentum vector follow its trajectory, or alternatively to flip a coin in the absence of any yardstick of worthiness of the pedestrians involved in our little thought experiment?
Could it be that one doesn’t need to do or be anything as such, in order to be considered entitled to, or deemed worthy of, a good life? Worthy of being an equal member of society, of giving and partaking in the simple pleasures of everyday living, of belonging, of loving and being loved? Could it be that mere existence alone is enough, that one’s worthiness is already implicit in it?