In a comment with @riverflows a little while back, a thought came to mind as an extension to my post last night about content value, which raises the next question of life value.
Do all lives matter equally?
Rather than getting stuck in the gutters of social movements however, I will just cut straight to the chase for me;
No. Lives do not matter equally.
While they all might matter, how much they matter is a spectrum and is spread across many axes, which largely comes down to personal opinion. Just like the value of content is quite subjective, there are points that could be enumerated to evaluate also, like the number of comments, views, shares and the like. While these aren't the only indicators of value, they can be used to create a rough kind of guide to move closer to a ballpark evaluation.
We might not want to admit it, but lives have the same kinds of numbers attached to them and we all have a partially subjective and partially objective value profile. For example, how we make people around us feel might be quite subjective, but the economic impact we have on the shared economy is actually quite objective, though hard to get an accurate profile of due to opaque data. We could also see the value we add to the community through social interaction as a subjective measure with very little precision insight possible, yet we could enumerate the amounts of people we have helped, though that is impossible to see also, especially once it goes into extended degrees of separation.
On top of this, the easiest way for me to prove to myself that one life is more valuable than another, is by looking at my own willingness to give up my own. If it meant saving my daughter or wife, I would give my life in a heartbeat, especially since I don't overly value my own life, but value theirs greatly. And, I would give up both mine and my wife's if it meant saving our daughter's.
Not pleasant thoughts perhaps, but it shows there is a hierarchy of value applied at an individual level, which indicates that it could be extrapolated out to other applications. Like it or not, we all are biased and we are all going to make preference decisions, so it is "only natural" that these biases get translated into the communities and cultures we create.
But, this aside, what led me down this path initially was the eternal discussion of content value, where there are all sorts of disagreements and, all sorts of excuses as to why some should be excused, while others are held to a different standard. And it is that last word that is the problem - "Standard".
Just like all individuals are ultimately unique, there is no standard as to what content provides value. But, even though everyone is unique, we are all ultimately more similar than we are different and, we can largely be put into groups based on the way we behave, our beliefs, looks or any number of other filters. However, while some people seem to want to go down the rabbit hole of identity separation until we are all completely empowered to live absolutely alone, I see stereotyping as useful, because we all do it by nature, regardless of how woke we might think we are.
And, we don't just apply it to people, we apply it to situations, governments, countries and nature. Stereotyping is the only way we can make it through our world, because if we don't, due to the ultimate individuality of all things, everything at all times becomes unrecognizable. When we pick up a fork, we recognize it based on its shape as not a spoon. When we see a bird, we recognize it as such, even if we don't know what kind of bird it is.
Is this subjective, or objective?
That is a question for reflection, but I wonder if we were able to have a "perfect view" of all activities, all interactions, all influences and knock-on effects and all results, we would be able to objectively apply a value of some kind, working backwards to see what events compounded into the result.
We don't have a perfect view.
So, we use what we know with what we have to evaluate, forming an opinion, a preference, a heuristic or whatever we need, in order to manage our own behaviors. For better or worse, good outcome or bad.
Working back, what got me thinking about all of this in the first place was considering how some people behave on Hive and how they might behave in the physical world. Are they the same? Is there a large disparity between the digital and real world? If they are adding value here, are they also value-adding to their community in which they live - even for people they don't know personally?
It is interesting to think about, because as I and others have noted before, often the people who consistently earn on their content for Hive, are also relatively skilled people who have a diversity of experience, including many jobs at different levels of organizations. And often, the people who have excuses for why they behave "badly", will cite their struggles in real life. For example, if a person is saying that they are not powering up and selling all their HIVE because of their desperate IRL needs, what does that say (on average) about that person?
Does it say something?
We all have issues of course and uncontrollable circumstances happen to us all also, but essentially, looking at a given point in time, it is an admission that one isn't able to cope with current circumstances. Sure, that might be a temporary problem due to the unexpected, but it could also be due to common process of that person, where they have got themselves into that position through their own behavior and, will continue to, because they aren't learning from the last time.
Not learning from our mistakes is common, is it not?
Generally, the value of the content is going to be tied to the richness of the experience of the content creator, as well as their skills and creativity levels. So, what does this say about the value of the person behind the content? Is there a correlation between what someone has done and what they are able to offer the community and, is there a correlation between the value they may add here and the value they add to their real world?
Taking money out of the equation, doesn't "wealth of experience" have more value than very little experience? Would you rather hear a story from someone who has lived a colorful life, or someone who has spent their life in front of the TV? Sure, both might be creative, but authenticity also shines through, and the inauthentic generally isn't received well by the audience on Hive, let alone gets paid.
In a type of trolley problem scenario, if there are two people at risk of death, with one being someone you consider to be value adding to your community and the other someone you consider to be value detracting, and you have the power to only save one - is it a hard decision?
Flip a coin.
What are the possible regrets down the track?
Track record matters.
Value is always subjective and it isn't just by the person making the judgement, but the conditions that person faces in the given moment. The value of a glass of water to an individual is very low when hydrated, very high when near succumbing dehydration. People waste water every day, while other people treasure it like gold.
People also waste their opportunities.
They waste their skills, they are unwilling to learn more, they only do what they like, they don't want to be uncomfortable, they are risk adverse, they are uninterested, lazy... whatever.
We can all do those things, we are all free to do absolutely nothing. But, who are you willing to hire at your company, who are you willing to support in your community, who are you willing to have look after your family if needed? The selection narrows fast, doesn't it?
Because of trust.
In a space like Hive, trust is important and that trust is built through behavior over a period of time, not the contents of a single post or even a month worth. That trust takes years to build in some cases and, it can be lost in a minute. It has happened many times, where someone "trusted" became untrusted, because of their greed or, circumstances of desperation, where they felt that they were justified to behave poorly.
When we look at the value of social capital, the value of a person in our community, that is what it comes down to.
Trust.
Are you acting in a way that builds trust in you positively in the community or, in a way that you can be trusted to take the negative route?
The way we behave always influences our results, no matter where we are, or what we do.
How valuable are we?
In the grand scheme of things, we aren't very valuable - but that can change drastically when filtered into the moment, especially for the people around us.
But none of us are valuable by default.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]