There’s an idea I have a hard time getting myself away from: The idea that it is necessary to create. The idea that it is necessary to add value, to contribute, to build up. That is, the idea that our purpose is our contribution, the things we make for society. And this is such an overwhelmingly entrenched maxim in my mind that looking at it in print I already feel like it makes me look bad to even be questioning this idea, but I feel like if we actually spend a bit of time to dissect it it starts to look pretty fucked up.
Let’s just say outright: Contributing is good! Doing things which make more people’s lives better is good, doing things which advance human knowledge is good, doing things which broaden our understanding is good! These are all great! That does not, however, make them, on a person by person basis, necessary. Your humanity does not rest on your ability to contribute. It doesn’t even rest on your ability to not do harm. These are good things to try to do: But they don’t make you you. No one thing makes you yourself except for your actual presence in the world.
The part that struck me most forcibly just now is the phrase “the value of human life.” Is this actually an okay way to think about human life? As something that can be valued? Is this how deeply the idea of competitive economics has drilled itself into us? The word ‘priceless’ was made to describe the idea of something being not measurable in terms of value, of having a deep significance, of being irreplaceable, but nowadays we just use it to mean extremely expensive. It feels, too, that when we speak of human life having value that is what we are saying, that our bodies and minds have value, that we might be expensive but we can still be bought and sold.
Fuck every life being precious, every life is more than that – it’s life.
It gets hard to live it when that life is spent trying to calculate how to maximize its own value.
This valuation of human life maybe made sense at one point, when we had enough food to keep half the village alive through winter and we had to make some hard choices about who got fed, who would be able to best keep the village going after winter ended. We have enough now to feed everyone. The problem isn’t that it’s too hard or too expensive to keep people alive, it’s just too unpopular. The only reason why we continue to evaluate ourselves this way is because it’s advantageous to those who would extract that value. It’s better for those on top if those below spend the rest of the time fretting how to make themselves ‘better’, how to produce more for less, how to be a bargain.
I’m tired of trying to be better. I still want to be, desperately, but I’m tired. Tomorrow I’ll probably continue to practice, to create, to expand: Like it or not, this is who I am now. But I still need to remember that it’s not all of who I am: I am also me.