Skip to main content

Value

Tentative realisations:

1) to be of value, one needs to bring value to some person(s) or some cause;

2) "value" includes demonstrating the efficacy of a system, eg being a model student demonstrates the success of the education system, fulfilling (1);

3) s/he who commands respect is valuable;

4) to command respect, one needs to bring substantial value to some person(s) or some cause (ie be "good" at something);

5) it is not enough to be "good" at something to command respect, for this respect in question is offered by other people. thus, one needs to be "good" at an endeavour that other people value (eg good at making music vs good at wasting time);

6) more value is accorded to acts of value that are more challenging to achieve (eg grand humanitarian efforts or benevolent volunteer work) or elicits an emotion (ie someone can be considered to be of special value if s/he makes you feel a certain way);

7) value is relative, for if everyone is good at something, then no one is (eg society values oral hygiene because it brings about positive externalities (1) and brushing teeth is beneficial to the cause of good oral health (2)(4), but most everyone does it, thus being good at brushing teeth is often overlooked unless pointed out intentionally or compared explicitly), for such items have passive value that only "activates" when "observed" and instances of its observation are relatively low compared to other more valued endeavours (6);

8) self-talk and self-worth help us perceive our value where no one else might yet;

9) self-talk and self-worth are provisional lies that we tell ourselves in order to not give up in the interim, until ultimately (1)(2)(4)(5) or (6) can be realised and achieved; one's intrinsic value can only be realised if it is demonstrated and realised by other people (1)(4)(5) or onto a system (2);

10) we are all of value, perceptions of not having value allude to not yet having met the right people (1) or not yet discovering the system to which we can contribute value toward (2).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Principles I-V

"When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms[...] Where we stand depends on where we sit." - Stephen R. Covey _ Recently I've been asked if I could write an advice column for those of my demographic in similar contexts. I'm not sure I've really figured it out myself. In line with my personal guiding 2022 Theme "Year of Novelty" and Mission "Return Better Than You Left", I have been exploring and expanding my domains of social interaction, community volunteering, life fulfillment, and continuous journaling. However, I suddenly realise that I'm not sure if these developments are better — or merely just different , especially since these are externally-centred and hence may be unsustainable sources of meaning. Even in psychologically safe environments, there may be psychologically unsafe moments. It would benefit us to shift our mental model from the dependence on external va...

Reviewed: The PSC Scholarship

The PSC Scholarship Scores of tourists throng the streets about this urban cafe in the heart of Tiong Bahru. Seated across from me is a colleague from one of the year-long projects that we have just completed. Two ice-cream waffles separate us on marble-esque plates. There was finally some time to sit down and catch up. As I recall it there wasn’t a missing beat in our conversation. She led mostly about our personal lives, dreams, intentions and plans. We chatted for a bit over the 90 minutes that we had between schedules. I had always known intellectually that we live very different lives, but I did not imagine the great extent to which this is true. She shares of adventurous climes in overseas travels (and missing our local food while abroad), studying a fourth language, exploring a part-time job, applying for internship, writing original songs, taking guitar lessons, chairing a student conference, and training for badminton up to four times a week at the community club. Some people ...

An alternative policy suggestion to menstrual leave, contextualised to Singapore

I came across this on my LinkedIn feed today. LinkedIn is no Reddit, but the comments seem largely supportive. In principle, I am fully in favour of the "health and wellness first" approach to employee management. It hurts to see my sister being expected to periodically feign optimal performance whilst being essentially functionally incapacitated. Therefore, by the standard of only this metric, a "2-day menstrual leave policy" (hereafter, "MLP") may sound like a good idea. However, since equity and equality are necessarily dichotomous, it may be possible that these distinctions engendered by such "progressive" policies may conversely entrench the very attitudes that they seek to dispel. This may be a problem because the pursuit of equity undermines the equality of opportunity, if employers with productivity-maximising objectives must decide between "menstruating people [sic]" and not, ceteris paribus. It won't be difficult to see h...