What Determines Worth?

What determines worth in people? What makes a person more useful, and what makes a person less useful?

It is a very open-ended question, but it is an essential one, and the fact that it is broad is part of what makes it important. "Worth" can be dissected in many ways, and this thread is for any of them, so long as the purpose of the post is to address the question of worth among people.

To phrase the question a different way, what qualities does mankind need more of, and what qualities does mankind need less of? Furthermore, what is the end goal of humanity that the certain qualities lead to? If people need to be more intelligent, then what is the purpose of intelligence, and how does it help?

Personally, I believe that empathy is important. A person is less likely to be greedy if he can understand what it feels like to not have enough of something. Understanding one another and acknowledging pain would prevent a lot of crimes (not necessarily in the legal sense). So, I believe that being empathetic is important to the human race, and I value those that care about others, far more than I value those that only care about themselves.

Your actions, and your actions alone, determines your worth (ï½¥ωï½¥).

I think that worth is undeniably a subjective value. Different people can have their own opinions about a person's value, but there's no "real" answer behind those opinions; it's entirely subjective.

With that out of the way, I too consider empathy, alongside forgiveness, to be the most virtuous of traits. I don't think actions alone represent all a person is, and I think that taking a person's viewpoint into consideration when judging their actions is extrememly important.

However, I've found that I'm quite fond of people who don't seem to have a divide in what they say and how they act, basically people who aren't hypocrites. I've found that I can tolerate a lot of selfish and heartless behavior as long as there is no pretense of righteousness to accompany it.

Hey forgiveness and empathy are actions you know! All verbs are actions, even thinking is action!

That's quite flawed in itself, no?

I mean what if there's a guy who just utterly fails at anything and everything he does, many times just being himself, does that mean he's worthless as human being?
If a guy works all day and doesn't have time to spend with his children, does this make him a bad father?



Reality at times is so complex we choose to ignore to fit our ideologies. We need to stop that and get over ourselves.

He has worth because he tried over and over again, it doesn't matter if you fail as long as you tried/attempted to do everything. Because he never gave up he has worth, he did something.



Nope, he's has worth as a father by providing income for a kid. He has worth because he is doing something. A father who takes care of his kids all the time also have worth too. They are both worth just different in the eyes of different people.

So wouldn't it be silly to say someone's worth is based solely on their actions?

no, it's because of those action that makes them seem worthy or not worthy in the eyes of people.

without action how can a person or some people determine what worth is?

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agreed brother, agreed

Almost everything is subjective. It's all in the eyes of the beholder. What ever may be worth a lot to you is worth shit to me.

Preaching to the choir, preachin to the choir.

Potential is how much ability you have avaliable to you to influences others lives. Worth is how much of that potential you can actually use.

Unless proven otherwise with proper documentation and everything, this is true sir.

People are too close minded they need to be more open minded (I don't mean in the sense of you should try new things) and thinking more logical there are so many people that I see that I don't get where they get there ideas from things that people think as a society.

It's a very subjective question since...


... but because it is a subjective question that should also mean that the worth of a human being is completely determined by the people around her, right? Then I suppose that as long as you're useful to someone, in some way, you're worth something, and the more useful you are to others the more you're worth? Not a definite answer, just some thoughts of mine.



Depends on the task of that person. Worth as a loving father requires love (duh) while worth as a rocket scientist require knowledge in rockets (lol, good example).



Personally, I wouldn't have humanity in any other way. I love our perfectly flawed existance and wishing for more intelligence or more empathy is not only impossible, but it'll also just lead to new problems. Let's work with what we have instead.

Its all a matter of personal judgement. What ever you decide to be worthy is worthy, and what ever you don't is not.

I'm not writing a thesis paper, so I won't stray from the main point:

It's all just up to opinion. Ever been through someone else's stuff and thought it all was just complete shit? The thing called 'opinion' really does exist, we are all totally different regardless of what the popular consensus is; especially what we're bombarded with everyday. Does opinion determine worth?

'Buy so-and-so from this commercial and be happy. Buy yourself a fake grin, even!'

Even then it is subjective as if the person wants to believe it. Ignorance is quite the thing.

The only things not subjective are materialistic things people can see like a table or a tree.

To everyone saying that this is subjective - yes, it is, obviously. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be discussed. It may not be possible to make the human race agree upon certain qualities that would benefit us all, but we can still voice our opinions and hear the opinions of others. The question of worth is something each person should ponder individually, and no doubt concludes unconsciously a large amount of the time, but if there is a dialogue, it is possible to give people new ideas and maybe eradicate old ones that no longer apply.

To stimulate conversation, I'll throw something out: I consider people that care only about sex and exert copious amounts of energy simply to get laid are, while not worthless, almost completely unneeded and useless. Pursuing sex doesn't help anybody or accomplish anything. The fact that most of these people don't even want to have children only reinforces that. They are incredibly selfish, and while that may not be too bad in and of itself, them not doing anything productive while being selfish is what damns them. To be clear, I'm not talking about people that go to the club on the weekends to get laid; I'm talking about people that spend countless hours only in the pursuit of sex. I don't see how the quality of loving sex more than anything else as a worthwhile quality in humanity. To want to have sex is already an instinctual desire in humans; we do not need to strengthen that desire.

Now, if anyone believes I am wrong, they can provide an argument for why I am wrong. That is the purpose of this thread.

And while discussing this on Fakku may not have any effect on anybody, a person's opinion as to what is more useful and what is less useful in life definitely does have an effect on the world. It can determine what job a person pursues, what type of people he has for friends, what kind of child he raises, etc.

If I raise my child to believe that honesty is the best policy (and while most parents may say this, they rarely believe it and teach it), then that child will consider honestly to be of greater value than lying (unless something else he experiences makes him consider otherwise, of course). He will consider those that tell the truth to be of greater importance, of more worth, and he may surround himself only with people that admonish lying, whereas a person that doesn't consider honesty to be incredibly useful or a trait worth having may surround himself with people that lie often.

That is a very simplistic way of describing it, but that is basically how our ideas of value and worth affect us. We tend to search for like-minded people, who thus reinforce our ideas. We may seek out communities that share many of our ideas concerning worth. In the world of politics, for example, different ideas of worth are what separate the political parties; Democrats consider certain things to be important while Republicans consider other things to be more important.

It is a very basic idea - what is better? what is worse? what is more helpful? what is less helpful? - but unless one seriously considers his own ideas of worth and value, he may simply be swept along by others.

I'm not asking people to come up with an ultimate answer to the question, especially since answers can differ depending on the location and can change with time. I'm just trying to stimulate discussion.