When our value becomes more important than our values

Slender Agenda · 2014-10-03T05:25:58+00:00

Privilegehas a way of keeping those that are part of the system from therealities of the world. We all experience our own realities of theworld and our being is a summation of our life experiences, good orbad, rejected or accepted. But our realities are also somewhat jadeduntil we set foot into another person's reality. Thisrevelation came to me in the midst of watching John Q, a movie thathad me seeing things and understanding the fatality of life throughspectacles of reality (non-privileged reality). The movie in shortdepicts the struggle of a father to get his son a new heart in asystem that is not structured for the poor. The hospital will nothelp him or his son even when he offers to pay them in installments. Obviouslythe hospital makes so much money from all the surgeries they do, butone poor life is not worth saving because what if other patients hearabout it? They cannot afford to help everyone who comes to themdesperate, they are not running a charity but a business. Thereis a sad reality to the fact that business are meant to run on profitand therefore cannot be run in a charitable manner lest the owner ofthe business ends up on the other side of the scale, poor and in needof assistance as well. It isinteresting how our lives are based on how much we are worth, ourvalue as human beings depends upon how much we can bring to thetable, and what people can gain from us. People only care about youwhen you have some relevance in their lives, when you are not needyor in help. Anexperiment done in the USA showed a very interesting angle on thistopic. A homeless man was dressed in a classy suit and made to poseas a business man on a phone call. He then started to ask people in avery casual manner for a dollar. It turns out people were more eagerto help him as a business man than as a beggar, infact, one persongave him ten dollars. Thereis of course a flip side to this. We are such a damaged andintelligent species that we sometimes play on people's emotions toget the better end of the stick. There have been cases of peoplefaking disability in order to get money on the streets. People havefaked all types of illnesses in order to get donations. WhenKarl Marx spoke of capitalism and alienation he was on the righttrack. He stated that because of consumerism and capitalism we werebound to become alienated from ourselves as individuals and from ourfellow human beings. We become so engrossed with materialism andvalue that we lose touch with the idea of humanity and what exactlyit means to be a human being. Butwhere do we draw the line as human beings? Where does our humanity start and where does it end when it comes to issues of money? Are wedoomed as a society or is there a way out of this?

Thread starter Slender Agenda
Start date Oct 3, 2014

Slender Agenda

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When our value becomes more important than our values

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