On Valuing Things
The following was first written as part of a longer post on the structure of Stoic practice, but I decided to separate it out to simplify things.
What do we mean by the word “value”?
We usually use that word as either a noun or a verb:
Noun: What is the value of this stock?
Verb: Her house was valued at $300,000.
Or we modify it into an adjective: That is a very valuable necklace.
In just about every use of the word, “value” is fundamentally about exchanging one thing for something else. It is a term about economics and trade, which is obvious when you see it in the context of discussions about buying and selling either physical or abstract resources, but is less obvious when you talk about it in the context of human emotional and social life. For example:
Noun: I believe that all human lives have equal value. It is important to have a strong sense of values.
Verb: I really value your time.
Adjective: Your opinion is very valuable to me.
This way of using the word “value” is describing something that is less quantifiable than a monetary price, and on the surface seems like it has nothing to do with a mercantile sense of trade. I’m guessing that for many people, thinking of the phrase “all human lives have equal value” as an economic proposition, as a reference to trade, is at least mildly offensive.
Having said that, I am going to argue that the more you think of the idea of “value” in terms of trading, even in this more social and emotional sense, the better off you are going to be, both in terms of your own actions and when dealing with other people.
I’m also going to argue that we are better off thinking of the word exclusively as a verb describing a subjective opinion, and not as a noun describing any kind of objective, intrinsic quality that something can possess.
What does it mean to say “All human lives have equal value?” To start with, I would say that using the word as a noun in this example is problematic, because unless you are talking about a value in a marketplace where you are buying and selling humans, the word doesn’t really mean anything. How do you measure what that value is? Value compared to what?
Let’s start by turning it into a verb and see what happens:
“I value all human lives equally.”
This is slightly less unclear. At the very least, it is eliminating the confusion of referring to “value” as some kind of objective quality when we can’t measure or quantify that quality in any objective way.
Also, by turning it into a verb, it is also describing a situation where there is some potential action or choice that might take place. I really think that this sense of action, of choice, is what is most fundamental to the idea of value. Valuing something always implies that you are valuing it in comparison to something else. You can’t say that something has value without at least implying that there is something else that does or does not have the same value.
It also implies that given a choice, you will choose what you value more over what you value less. Looking at the idea of value in this way, we can come up with the idea that if you want to know what someone’s actual values are, look at their actions and the choices they make instead of listening to what they say their values are. The easier the choice is made, the stronger you value what you are choosing.
If you consider people’s actions to reveal what their actual values are, then you will inevitably have the experience, especially when reflecting on your own behavior, that there is very often a disconnect between what we say we value and what our actions say we value. This disconnect occurs because the word “value” in this context might be referring to something completely disconnected from our potential actions and choices. Taking “All human lives have equal value” as an example, it could have a range of meanings –
- It could be a statement about aspirational self-image: “I experience pleasure when I think of myself as the kind of person who would agree with the phrase ‘all human lives have equal value.’”
- It could be a form of social signaling, of jockeying for position in the hierarchies of social status: “I want other people to have a particular idea of who I am when I say the phrase ‘all human lives have equal value.’”
- It could be a rule for deciding how to act, how to make a choice: “I would give up the exact same amount of my own important resources (time, money, energy, etc) to help any human being, regardless of who they are or how I feel about them.”
There are more ideas here to flesh out, which I will probably eventually get to . . .
- Therefore valuing something means choosing it over another alternative, or exchanging something for it that is of equal importance to you
- Valuing things you can actually control, such as your ability to voluntarily and rationally respond to the present moment, means actually choosing to do so over letting yourself get carried away by automatic, habitual or socially programmed reactions.
- Saying you value it as a form of aspirational self-image is mostly useless, although it at least keeps the idea in your conscious mind and reminds you that it is a possibility.
- Saying you value it as a form of social signalling is mostly silly, except if you are doing it consciously as a way of recruiting other people to help keep you honest, since they will usually gleefully point out when you are acting contrary to the way you talk.
But for now, that is enough, at least in terms of how I like to think of phrases in philosophies such as Stoicism that talk about learning how to value things correctly, or learning to value the correct things.