Poll of the day: virtue and merit.

[featherynscale]

Standard poll disclaimer: not all possible descriptions of human experience are represented by the answers given below. This is not hard science. It is not even social science. It is still a better-designed poll than half of the crap that Harris or Zogby put out.** Choose the best answer. If all answers suck equally, don't answer. Nobody's forcing you, darling.

[Poll #945207]

** Seriously, I took a Zogby poll the other day which asked the question "Can a woman be sexy if she is a size 14 or larger?", and the only two response options given were "Yes, sexy is about attitude, not appearance", and "No, appearance must come first". No option at all for people who thought that women who are size 14 or larger could actually have an appearance that was attractive. It was like answering "Have you stopped beating your wife?".

Comments

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

The last one perplexed me. Not criticizing your poll, just explaining my thoughts. I would agree that everyone is equally worthy of some basic inherent value as a human being, but beyond that, when you ask whether some people are worthier than others, I want to ask, worthy of what?

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that's part of the issue -- how you define worth. In my estimation, if you are asking 'worthy of what?', you're probably more in the 'some are more worthy than others' camp; the question requires some inequality to be meaningful.

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does, but choosing that one makes it possible for one to deny any inherent worth in simply being an entity, and I wouldn't say that exactly. I wonder if it connects to ones who consider "being" or "doing" more important. It would seem to follow that "being" people would be more likely to see people as equal, but "doing" people would evaluate their actions as being worth more or less than other actions.

I have a hard time separating who people are from what they do. It seems to be inherently linked to me.

[zylch.livejournal.com]

I agree on the difficulty of determining between "being" and "doing" -- to me, what someone is is defined by what they do, and what they do is determined by what they are. It's a recursive relationship. (*noted potential for misuse of "recursive," but if it's the wrong word I can't think of the right one.)

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I think when people are being authentic, who they are informs what they do to such a degree that they are inseperable. However, I also think that most of us don't match up who we are and what we do as well as we might, most of the time. I know plenty of people who are kind and who have no time to feed the hungry or whatnot. Or people who are intelligent and who don't contribute to intelligent conversation for fear they'll be laughed at. And so on, and so forth. They *are* the adjective, but they can't or won't *do* the verbs that the adjective implies. Should we give people 'credit' for that?
And on the other side, I know people who feed the hungry and who are not, by their estimation or the estimation of others, particularly kind, and so on. Given a choice, I will likely hold them in higher esteem than the person who has it the other way around, but I understand that other people won't think that.

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

And there you have one of the main points of the parable of the two sons. Who honored his father, the one who said he would work in the fields and then didn't, or the one who refused to work in the fields, but then relented?

Talk amongst yourselves.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I'm voting for the guy that's out there working, regardless of how grumbly he is about it. The other kid is a flake.

[kellan-m-solan.livejournal.com]

I was already writing featherynscale's post in my head before I got to it and I suspect she said it better than I would have.

I do a lot of things I don't feel are particularly reflective of my nature--sometimes out of fear, sometimes coercion, sometimes simply because not doing them would make a fight I don't feel is worth losing myself in. There are many things I could do because they would reflect some inner need, but I don't do them for very external reasons (I could feasibly protest for better environmental protections, which I believe in strongly, but to do so in any way that might be effective would require association with organizations I have ideological differences with. So to do this in a manner that reflects my true self I would have to do it alone... which is essentially pointless).

There are also things I do which are primarily a result of who I WAS. My work, for example is a combination of: a.) I was the kind of person who thought it more important to pursue what I valued at the time instead of wasting my days at school b.) in this society if you don't do school there are limited ways to make decent money. c.) this is the opportunity to not be piss poor that presented itself to me, it could have been something vastly different, it just wasn't.

Action is more important than words, yes. But to infer meaning by observing trivial day to day actions is probably an inaccurate way to draw conclusions about people. Now say, what I would do if the apocalypse came tomorrow might be more reflective of who I am. What kind of car I buy is probably less so. Who I make friends with might be indicative of something about me, but is hopelessly complicated by happenstance (who I happen to meet, where I happen to travel, what I happen to be doing, what languages I happen to speak). Whether or not I choose to buy organic food, probably says very little. What I do and what I am, while perhaps causally related are certainly not the same thing.

[kellan-m-solan.livejournal.com]

I too have a certain sense of the value of things as a function of being. Though mine tends to stem from an existentialist place and therefore applies equally to inanimate things (objects, nausea and all that Sartean goodness)

I'm curious what, in your estimation, makes human beings special. What entitles human beings to an inherent level of value that is, presumably, somewhat more than a cantaloupe or a dog. I ask, because I want to better define my position (for myself) and I don't often get thoughtful arguments. Most people just whip out 'God' and have done. You very certainly aren't most people.. Care to indulge me?

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

Eh, her poll was about people, so I talked about people. I'm not sure I do believe humans are inherently speshuler or of more value than anything else. Cantaloupes and dogs are valued as salad and pets or whatever, and humans are valued as humans. Theoretically speaking. If there were a fire, I'd grab my daughter before my cat.

I'm not sure what makes sense at a logical level still makes sense on the emotional level.

[kellan-m-solan.livejournal.com]

Laughs* damn. Ah well, for me I suppose the daughter would have value because of her personal qualities and also her relationship to you. Her being human is inconsequential except for how it affects the relationship. So you and I are probably pretty close to in agreement here, which sucks cause I don't learn much from that, but hey!

[wildnsquirrelly.livejournal.com]

I'll pass on the Dog Salad, but perhaps with my busy work schedule a pet cantaloupe is just what I need. I'd certainly value it more than some of the asshats I've had to deal with lately.

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

Without viewing the results of your quiz, I suspect that the answer to the first question may be split fairly down the middle it our Questing ritual was any indication of who or what as it was fairly evenly split.

[catvincent.livejournal.com]

Question one - you *are* what you do. Anything else is pretence, fantasy or hypocrisy.

Four - define 'worth'. But generally, some folk are pretty good, some just OK - some are a pure waste of carbon. But... they should all be *considered* equally worthy until proven otherwise. YMMV.

[wildnsquirrelly.livejournal.com]

We are what we do, as I see it. I know this is echoing what a lot of others have already said, but I agree. I can't think of many instances of someone being exceptionally notable simply because they exsist.

As for the most over valued virtue I site punctuallity. Mostly that's because it's the one I get in trouble over lacking most often. The general public has no appreciation of P.S.T. I tend to run five to ten minutes late to most things, and it seems far too important to most people.

Fashion sense, you say? I'd call it a competancy like any other. Knowing how to dress to make a certain impression is an important skill to have. There's a definite line though, between knowing what looks good and constantly being a slave to those fashion standards.

A person's worth is measured by their survivability and personal growth. I'll value a bum off the streets that's willing to improve himself over someone that's in a comfortable rut and couldn't be arsed to achieve the next step in their own personal development.

[orcjohn.livejournal.com]

I can't honestly answer some of these questions.

The first for example, none of these really matter to me... I care about WHO you are, the rest is irrelevant.

As for the last question, I believe that everyone starts out as equally worthy of everything. It is their choices that make them more or less "Worthy" of things than other people (for certain things). So I guess people by their actions become more or less worthy.

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

My personal opinion - and I know you weren't asking for that specifically, but I want to explain my answers, too! :) - is that a person's worth to me is in the interactions that I have with that person. If someone is willing to interact with me, to get to know me, they inherently have more worth, to me, than somebody who's going to blow me off/not give me the time of day. By the same token, someone who gives more interaction to me - and I'm not talking about time, specifically, this comes back to what I personally value and do not value in my life - they have more worth, to me, than someone who gives me just a small slice of their time/attention. This isn't an end-all, be-all, though. As in most everything in my life, I take this on a case-by-case basis.

Every human being has needs, and in that is the tendency to value the people who meet those needs (physical, psychological, emotional, etc) more than the people that don't. IMHO.

Probably selfish of me, too. But I'm learning to value myself first/more than I value others. Somebody has to. ;)