Values
Life, business, play... life; it’s all about values or their absence.
It is my observation that most people have real difficulty in actually caring about their own values, much less trying to make sense of them.
The exercise of knowing where one actually stands on any given issue is not a trivial jumping to conclusions. Many of us do exactly that and as a result end up supporting a position which in reality goes against our real values. It is why logic matters.
Logic is merely a tool to help us understand where we really want to land on a given subject. It is not a device to trick us into saying something we do not believe.
The problem is that once a view has been expressed, usually from an emotional reaction, we have a tendency to see all attempts that turn us away from that view as “twisting my words.”
When the subject matter is something that genuinely moves us, to anger, disgust, fear or grief, it is that much more difficult to examine our values if that examination hints at something less than a clear cut reinforcement of our emotional response.
But the refusal to go through that examination can lead to unexpected and undesirable consequences.
Let’s take the very commonly expressed sentiment, “if it saves only one life it will be worth it.”
In every single case where I have heard this statement uttered, it has been completely misguided. It is based on the idea that it is impossible to place a value on even a single human life. Given my primary axiom, one might expect such an attitude to find in me a receptive audience. That too is a mistake, for a single human life can be “priced” at minimum in terms of how many other human lives it costs to preserve.
To make it clear through the absurd, if you were presented the choice of saving one human life at the cost of all other human life, would you still say, it is worth it?
So clearly there are limits to the worth of saving one human life. Once we recognize there are limits we are obliged to try to do the calculation in all instances where someone is claiming “if it saves only one...”
In Canada a classic example is the long gun registry. The proponents frequently use the “saves one life” argument, including, to his disgrace, a university professor quoted in the press. The registry cost $2 billion to get going and, depending on who you believe, between $60 and $100 million annually to operate. These costs do not include the costs imposed on private citizens both in the fees they pay and the time required to go through the registration process.
As of this writing, I have heard only one (questionable) claim that a life was saved because of this expense.
Consider, the stated purpose is saving human life. The resources available are $2 billion plus a minimum of $60 million per year. Anyone who claims that those resources would not save many more lives used in a different way is either intentionally dishonest or simply stupid.
Forget about going the direct route and using the money to improve the health care system, it would have saved more lives spent on something as mundane as highway improvement. Or impaired driving enforcement.
If you really want to stand behind some values and are willing to recognize that humans other than Canadians have lives of value, that same money spent on vaccines in Africa, or clean water or a dozen other projects would have saved thousands of lives.
If it only saves 100 lives, it is still clearly not worth it if our purpose is in fact saving lives.
If however, the purpose is something else, something the proponents do not wish to disclose or discuss publicly, the money may be well spent in achieving their objectives. We cannot know since they will not come clean with their agenda.
Regardless, the point is that here is a case where if you started by supporting the long rifle registry because you thought it would save lives, and if saving lives is an important value to you, your support would have the unintended consequence of actually costing more lives as the resources are consumed in this undertaking. > Go back
Sometimes the exercise of taking apart our positions to see how they square with our values can be frustrating and disappointing. Because sometimes it will lead us to conclusions that would require us to give up something we want, not for our values, but for our own gain.
Universal government-subsidized child care may be an example.
You believe that people are responsible for their choices. You believe that parents are responsible for their children. You would never think of knocking on your neighbour’s door to demand money because the expense of raising your kids is hard on you.
So why would you be willing to send others to forcibly compel your neighbour to turn over the cash?
That is precisely what happens. If a taxpayer refuses to pony up for your child care bills, men in blue uniforms come with guns.
And it is a zero sum game. People who have chosen not to or who are medically unable to have children are forced to give over money they earned to people who have chosen to have children. It is theft by proxy with the armed might of government being that proxy.
Now there are some interesting counter arguments to this very basic case. One that I came up with on my own to test my position and that I find somewhat persuasive is the idea that while everyone may not have children, everyone was a child and after a generation everyone paying for child care will have benefitted from child care, similar to the case for free universal elementary education. My problem with that idea is that it assumes the benefit is to the child and not the parent.
All that aside, the point I wish to illustrate is that if you are a parent and, instead of simply embracing free child care because you stand to profit from the policy, you actively work through your actual values as they relate to the subject, you may find that your values conflict with your possibility for immediate gain.
Such situations pose a dilemma that will really tell you who you are. You can stick to your values and forgo the gain or you can abandon your values and pocket the profit.
The problem with the latter is that most often, when you abandon your values the decision comes back and bites you in the ass on some other completely unrelated subject of importance to you.
My purpose in this little essay on values is to try to persuade you, even to a small degree, that i
t is unwise to avoid trying to square your specific positions on issues with the values you hold that should underlie those specific positions. It is unwise not only because you will invariably end up supporting things you don’t truly believe in, but also because you expose your self to manipulation and trickery by others.
One of the best ways to test yourself is to find someone who disagrees with you and engage them in the discussion. You can do it on your own but it is much more difficult as we all find it difficult to genuinely put the case against us in unbiased terms.
