The Creation of Value or The Meaning of Life or 42

In a previous post, I was commenting that I had been thinking of the concept of value recently. Then, the other day, I picked up a book entitled The Creation of Value by Irving Singer, who is a professor at MIT. The book is quite good and I thought I'd copy some of it down so that I can look back at it. I usually do this in a journal, but now that I have a blog, it will be so much easier to find where I write down these random things. I can find most of it again in google books.



There are some pages not included in this preview however, so here are some quotes/notes from those pages:

1. Throughout history educated people generally assumed that philosophy, like religion, is capable of elucidating the meaning of life. In the past, philosophers often made this attempt. But the twentieth century has been quite different. Questions about the meaning of life have been dismissed or neglected by many of the greatest thinkers in the last hundred years. Even if they were right to do so, we must nevertheless wonder why it is that human beings are both attracted to such matters and constantly baffled by them.

2. A healthy person does not brood about the meaning of life. He gets up in the morning and throws himself into activities that involve his energies and provide personal gratifications.

9/10. Peasants - Without much schooling and without systematic thought, they had learned how to live in manner that eluded him. They acted out of faith rather than reason, and he concluded that only faith comparable to theirs could make life meaningful. This helped him toward religious feelings he thought he had outgrown.

14/15. Above all, we must ask ourselves whether we understand what the original problem was. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Once you know what the question is, you'll know what the answer is.



21/22. Nietzche - amor fati (love of destiny, or things as they really are). This attitude entails a heroic and healthy-minded acceptance of reality even though it is horrible and wholly destructive to everything that participates in it. The worst parts of existence also belong to reality, and he has determined to love and therefore accept it all completely.

I just realized the google book ends on page 34, so there is far too much to fill in here and probably not right to do with regard to copyright. Here's one last quote though from page 103:

John Stuart Mills: People can be happy only if they "have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness: on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end".

The Quest for Value

 

 

 

 

I love antiquing and going to auctions. There's something in me that years for the treasure hunt. Even if I don't purchase something myself, I just like seeing what's out there... the odd, the unique, the rare. We were at an auction last night... probably one off the worst ones I've been too (but at least it was close by). I walked in and didn't see a single thing that I wanted, and yet we sat down and watched the bidding for a while. It got me to thinking about value.

What gives something value? Something that I would have passed up for a nickel at a yard sale, someone else was purchasing for hundreds of dollars. Or at another auction we were recently at, one church icon went for over $80,000 while others were going for only a few hundred. Perhaps its because I haven't done my research or know what that particular piece is or how rare it is, but I find it interesting how values can differ so much and how so often 'one person's trash is another's treasure'. Whats valuable to me may not be valuable to you and vice versa, and a child's drawing can be worth more to a parent than all the Picaso's in the world.

Value is such a complicated thing, there are thousands of books on the subject and even just a simple search in wikipedia shows how complex a topic it is and how many subjects it is a part of:

Value may refer to:
Value (ethics)
Value theory
Value (personal and cultural)
Value (economics)
Theory of value (economics)
Value investing
Value (marketing)
Value (mathematics)
Value (computer science)
Value (law)
Value (individual)
Value (semiotics)
Value (colorimetry)

I would probably have to study my whole life and still not understand everything there is to know about value. Its such an interesting concept that is woven into every moment of our lives, whether it be how we value our time (what we spend our hours doing), how we value our relationships, or spiritual life, or our material possessions. Our values or what we value is like the steering wheel that directs us. What we value, whether we think about it or not, often determines its direction. It reminds me of a discussion Alice has with the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland:

"Cheshire Puss, asked Alice. Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to go, said the Cat. I don't much care where, said Alice. Then it doesn't matter which way you go, said the Cat."