WOTW / Way of the World - Do All Humans Have Equal Value? — Analyzed: Is Value Intrinsic?
Way of the World - Do All Humans Have Equal Value? - BitChute
This is a good presentation, except, I believe, it is a logical fallacy that all value is subjective and that no value is intrinsic. That is an error of conception.
There is real value and there is imaginary value.
Beyond imaginary value, all those things that are real (which is everything that is not imaginary) have intrinsic value. His error is a misunderstanding of other notions that are spuriously substituted for “value”.
First, the difference between real and imaginary value:
Fantasy does not change reality. Confusion does not change reality. Error does not change reality. Ignorance does not change reality.
Does a glass of water in a burning desert cease to have value simply because the person dying of dehydration and renal failure, for whatever reason (delusion, hydrophobia, preferring a Stroh’s beer, wanting to die), does not believe that it is actually water in the glass (believing it is a mirage or a trick or poison) or does the glass of water cease to have value merely because he does not believe that water itself does not has value?
Most importantly, this notion of value being only a subjective evaluation is a form of anti-intellectual humanism that leaves no room for God, unless man thinks that God has value for man (and this point will be driven home in my example of a gold coin, at the end). This is where most “Christians” fail to be Christians. They are humanists. They think (consciously or subconsciously) that God exists for them; not the other way around. He is a mere “tool” in their tool chest of life; and if He does not fit in their egocentric plans, they deem the tool of little or no value to them. God is only important to them to the degree that they in their minds subjectively opinionate that God is useful to them. They know Him not as LORD. They deem themselves and their feeble breaths to be of greater value than God Himself who gave and continues to give that breath. They choose to believe their own delusion / fantasy which has no affect on reality (which they shall one day find out).
Secondly, intrinsic value and things confused with intrinsic value:
A logical parallel can be made substituting the word value for truth, and that will clearly show the fallacy of value merely being a subjective opinion. Is there no truth that is intrinsic? Is truth something that people subjectively determine for themselves? Do more than one person get together and vote to establish what truth is? [Note: their voting or recognizing truth does not cause the truth to exist. It is only their submission to and their coming into harmony with truth. Of course dishonest, immoral, and evil “politics” corrupts the understanding of everything.] Is 2+2 only 4 if you subjectively think so? if we unanimously vote to so declare it?
Again, we can substitute the words value, or truth, for reality. Is reality merely a subjective phenomena? (if it is, then stay the Hell out of my reality!) Is there no intrinsic reality?
Let us now consider it on an existential level. Instead of asking if a paperclip has intrinsic value and whether it only has value if someone perceives subjective value in it (which is actually a projection of value from the perceiver’s mind, a myth of value imputed unto it, and completely different than intrinsic / existential value), is then a paper clip even actually a paperclip? Does it cease to be a paperclip if someone thinks that it has no value?
What WOTW whisperer is confusing with ACTUAL value, is preference, prejudice, opinion, momentary situational utility / usefulness; and this actually undermines his very thesis.
If you are out in the middle of nowhere and need to dig a hole and you don’t have a shovel but you find a 1-ounce gold coin in the sand, that coin is NOT “worthless” (worth and value are synonyms); it does NOT not have value. It merely cannot be used as a shovel. But it can buy many, many shovels, under the right conditions, and hence it indeed has value. Thus, the notion that it has no value is a fallacy of thinking that all exists is that singular moment, that point in time in that place in that circumstance. The gold coin still has value even if you think that it is fool’s gold, and in that scenario YOU are the one who has no value (because of your worthless false perceptions), not the gold coin!
Take it one step further. Imagine that you are dying. Whether one gold coin or a million gold coins—you have 5 minutes left to live. Do those coins have no intrinsic value? OF COURSE they have intrinsic value! Again, the point is that at that moment they are (or would seem to be) of no USE to you; and if that moment is “all the moments” that you have left, then it would seem that they have no value to you at all; but again, that may solely be due to wrong thinking on your part. That they have no intrinsic value is a misperception and that they are of no value to you is a misperception. Again, it is YOU who have no value, if you are but a few breaths from the grave.
The gold coins indeed have value. No one else in the room awaiting hearing the reading of your will would agree that the gold coins have no value. Even those who were left out of the will would not agree that the gold coins have no value—for if the coins had no value of those left out of the will, they would have no reason to be bitter that they were left out of the will. Even if you were a monumental narcissist those coins would indeed have value to you with only a few heartbeats left: for you could declare in front of witnesses and a lawyer and notary public that you wanted a building on par with Solomon’s Temple to be built as your mausoleum. Value, like time, like reality continues on oblivious to all spectators.
Did sand have no intrinsic value before man realized that it could be melted into glass or mixed with cement to make concrete? to be added to impacted clay soils to make them frangible? that it could be used to make a nice, soft, uniform, clean beach? that it could be used to fill a child’s sand box? etc. No, the intrinsic value remains unaffected by man’s lack of discovery or appreciation of that intrinsic value.
If you forget that you have a $100 bill in your coat pocket, does it cease to have value? Better yet, if you forgot that you had a U.S. 1969-S doubled die penny in your coat pocket and forgot about it for the past 52 years, does it have no intrinsic value? Well, today it is worth $40,000. Now, THOSE two are examples of attached or perceived value (and it may only be “subjective” value if only one person thought it was worth $100 or $40,000). A paper $100 bill is not worth $100 unless there is $100 worth [an agreed upon amount] of a precious metal in warehouse storage backing it. The double-struck penny’s value of $40,000 is only due to collectors wanting it. However, even if not worth $100 or $40,000, the paper dollar and penny still have intrinsic value. A piece of paper that size could be rolled up to be used as a funnel, to stuff with tobacco to make a cigarette, to be used to write a note upon, to be used as kindling to light a fire, etc. The penny could be used as a spacer to hold things tightly together in something small that is enclosed; it could be used as a fishing sinker, as a piece of jewelry, etc. Are all these things merely in the imagination of the perceiver—or is not all of that also intrinsic value in the items themselves? Not everything could be used in the same ways as a $100 bill piece of paper or a (supposed to be) copper penny could be used, in my examples. A pile of dog poo could not be used in the same way. Thus, the value is not merely in the mind, but also existential in each item.
If no one on earth existed, would those gold coins have no intrinsic value? Well, if you did not exist, you could not make that judgment against the the gold coins having no intrinsic value. If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make any sound? What is sound? Sound is vibrational waves striking an ear or some other receiver (like a parabolic dish, a recording microphone attached to a recording device). Remember some sounds are audible (within the range that the human ear can hear) and some inaudible. If an inaudible sound is still called a sound, then indeed it exists even if you can’t hear it. Right? If two people were there in that forest when the tree fell, a deaf man, and a man with perfect hearing, would the tree still make a sound when it fell? What about if only the deaf man were there? If the waves exist, the sound exists. Whether there is anyone there to “hear” the sounds is as irrelevant as whether or not there is anyone there to “feel” the waves.
Man is not the center or the sum of all things. God is. God has ordered all around Himself. Fools become deluded into thinking that there is no God (because if they admitted that God existed, and that He is Creator of the universe, they would have to acknowledge that all is His [that is, that He owns all that exists], including us, that He is Lord, and they would then have to admit that they are dutybound to obey Him). Thus, anti-intellectually, like a 3-year old who thinks that if he closes his eyes no one can see him (and hedonistically, narcissisticaly, and self-masochistically), instead, many such people choose to believe the self-declared delusion that all exists for man; or, those who are psychotic may choose to believe that “animals are human too” or that ants or blades of grass have just as much or more value than (white) man. Others may choose to believe that all exists intrinsically for itself; or others may choose to believe the delusion that there is no meaning at all, only chaos.
Again, we are back to, What is truth? Truth exists regardless of delusion and delusion is not truth but irrational opinion. Value exists, even though there is imaginary value, even though there are different types, levels, or degrees of value; and value is confused with usefuless, again, intrinsically and situationally.
Value indeed IS intrinsic, but again, the actual truth is that not all value is the same! and that is the very point that WOTW guy was making, in terms of humans (though because he is probably an evolutionist he thinks that all are humans and he thinks that all evolved from the same goo) before he got sidetracked and spun his wheels in the mud thinking that value is not intrinsic.
Another serious flaw is his repeated use of phrases like, “those who look like me / us”, etc. and the notion of different “tribes”. Sometimes he uses the word “kind” (that is, meaning a different scientitic classification entirely), and that is the proper term. Someone merely “looking like or sounding like me / us” is childish thinking. It is shallow thinking. It is imperceptive. Race is not merely color. Painting someone of another race a different color would not change everything. It is not merely skin deep. It is not about mere appearances. It is not merely about environment, how they were raised, or how they think. Fool’s gold indeed looks like real gold to the untrained eye. The senses can all be fooled. Yes, fool’s gold looks more like real gold than pig-iron does; but that does not make fool’s gold to be real gold. Painting (or electroplating) pig-iron would not change reality either. The difference between metals is not “how it looks”, it is chemical composition (reality). The difference between races is not “looking alike”, but genetics and God having established those genetics to be different and not be the same; and not merely to “look different”.
Other than that, it is a good presentation (as most all of his presentations truly are, top notch!) and the whole is easily fixed by making the adjustment concerning intrinsic value (and avoiding preoperational notions and expressions of “looking like” as if such were the same as “being”). RAB
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