A question of worth

What is life, living and loving worth?

[aquestionofworth-blog]

Collective value

Collective value is the shared value we place in ‘things’. It doesn’t require everyone to agree but as a minimum 2 people and mostly like a group value.

Under collective value I’d include laws, collective belief systems such as religions or money. I also include what you contribute to the collective eg Dr, salesman, accountant or are you the stay home mum bring up 2 kids on your own? 

I’ll not go into religion as I’m sure most of you understand the essence of that belief system but money may be less obvious. The £5 note will buy £5 worth of goods from another individual. Yet the £5 note cost 7p to make because of this it’s fitted with all sort of counterfeiting deterrents. So is a £5 note worth 7p? No because we believe it’s worth £5. In effect money has become a belief system. The value of the £ vs $ for example fluctuate based on the belief of it’s value. The £ represents the strength of the economy of the UK, it’s imports, exports, debt, risk etc. 

Most complex though is social collective values. It usually borrows from law, religion and health but also from the media and press. This you can think of as shared social expectation eg it’s wrong to cheat on your partner, or it wrong cough without covering your mouth.

Collective value is far more complex than personal value, to know what you value is possible to derive and change but to know what is collectively valued is harder. You have less control on what the collective believe. For example most of summer people were hating the migrants trying to get to Europe saying we don’t want any in UK. We’re humans we should want to help others who are suffering but we by engage didn’t. Then a picture of a boy washed up dead on a beach surfaced and collectively we want to help. That picture made more impact than any individual comment and it did change peoples collective values for a while until the image faded. 

If your collective views are strong and go against the collective norms then this clash eats you up, you need to understand this clash and either simply accept it or try to change the collective norms. If you chose to try to change the collective be aware that it can be long and hard, you need to accept that the collective may not change and find value in trying not in being successful. 

[aquestionofworth-blog]

Personal value

Ok so whats personal value?

To me it’s something that you place value in but others may not. I often think of these as the things we own or we belive in that others don’t share. It could be a possession for example I own a Mr T bubble bath figure which has no monetry value but to me, it reminds me of my youth, the relationship between the object and the memory is where its value lies.

The same can be said for many photo’s though some I’d say fall into a form of family collective value such as your family pictures. Many though are personal and we each expeience them differently.

The final element and most complex in personal values is your inner personal belief system, your personal moral code which is unique to you. This is one fo the areas phycologists ask you to look if you suffer depression as your personal values might conflit with other peoples personal values or societys collective values and thus making happyness harder. I think there is a lot to be said to this but I don’t like the theory that we have to conform to be happy.

Perhaps phycologists are more creating an awareness of our own values and the ability to challenge them when these make us sad. Some of our personal values aren’t based on fact but based on leason taught to us as a child or a passing comment we absorb. Perhaps the leason the phycologists are asking us to do is to reset those vallues with work infrequently. A bit like ‘i’ before ‘e’ accept after ‘c’. We’re taught it in schools but in later life we learn or are taught to ignore it as it’s wrong more often than it’s right.

We don’t like change as humans but rules we create to help us at one stage in life such might well derail our ablity further down the line. Like learning to ride a bike with stablisers then not changing your rules when the stablisers are off, if you don’t change to learn how to balance you’ll end up pretty battered and bruised.

[aquestionofworth-blog]

‘It’

Today I find myself asking a short but the more I think about it complex question.... is it worth it? 

But what do I mean? Why is this complex? What does ‘it’ refer to? What is worth? Does ‘it’ = ‘it’?

Well ‘it’ in this case means many things but it’s always individual to person asking and to what they’re asking about. We answer this question a millions of times a day e.g. buying a cup of coffee, having 5 more minutes in bed before work or the more profound question many depressed people ask of is life worth living? Every decision we make comes down to this 4 word question.

I’ve been diagnosed depression for 12 years and have had my ups and downs and this is often the question which haunts me most. It can be the question that pushes me into a dark place but also the one which can bring me light. I find the question a double edged sword which I’m never able to answer. Today whilst I’m rational I want to explore it.

I believe worth can be the measured in terms of ...

personal value

collective value 

material value

emotional value 

survival

My next 5 posts will look at each of these in turn as I decide what is on the left hand side of my question before I focus on the right hand side-  is it worth it? is ‘it’ > ’it’