by Phil Ossefie (with contributions from Pierce Ng and Todd Ler)
TLDR: Yes, starting with considering other people’s struggles more.
Price is what you pay, value is what you get
We can’t talk about value without talking about Money because it’s the most popular way we determine the worth of as many things as possible. We defined money before as a store of value. Having it gives us the option to exchange it for survival needs or motivation boosts at our convenience.
Ranking Value
The amount we have to exchange for actual value also makes money not just a storage, but a measure of value. We’ll pay more money for something we value, and the amount we’re willing to pay gives everyone an understanding of how much we value that thing.
Below is a rough but simple guide for how the human race generally decides the financial worth of anything:
We’re likely to value things we can touch over what we can’t because physical objects and effects are more obvious, so it’s easier to understand how it helps us.
Survival vs Motivation
So we prioritise survival over enjoying life, even when life feels terrible and boring.
We could feel the worst, most bored, the lowest amount of motivation to live we’ve ever felt, and we probably still wouldn’t stop eating or hydrating ourselves—we’d still survive.
More often than not, anyway.
Merely surviving without the motivation to live is likely a far less pleasant experience to say the least, but we wouldn’t be dead, we might even be in a comfortable physical environment.
And as long as we’re alive, we can find new motivations to live or retake old ones. But if we’re gone, there’s nothing to recover.
This might sound like survival always matters more and is therefore always worth more than motivation, but as with anything related to money, it’s more a matter of
supply and demand.
Whether we’re selling survival or motivation, high demand and low supply leads to a high price or salary… and vice versa, a high salary implies someone is in high demand and low supply. If the pay in our industry is generally low, it just means our industry, and everyone in it, is not rare or in demand.
There are possible solutions like encouraging demand
using hype, trends, plain ol’ misinformation
or convincing people you’re the only supplier,
e.g in a sense, it’s better for Taylor Swift if we see her as the only supplier of Taylor Swift songs, as opposed to one of the suppliers of pop music (although technically Braun is also a supplier of part of her discography, at this point she’s as good as the only one).
Anyway, if it was so easy, everyone would be rare and in demand.
Ranking people
Life can get competitive, so it’s generally helpful to have more money than less (except maybe if it starts attracting enemies). In modern society, money is a largely accurate measure of odds of survival, so
it’s our survival instinct that somewhat leads us to rank people in our head as being better the more money they have.
We’d want to rub elbows with them or follow their example. Vice versa, we might look down on lower-income people for the inverse reasons. The richer they are, the more likely they are to survive, and that’s a big deal to us all.
There’s also the assumption that people with money have contributed something genuinely useful and were rewarded for supplying something society demanded, and more often than not this is true. However, it’s also true that:
- People who never worked for money can be born into it, and are given more resources and opportunities to make more of it, or take it easy
- People make money through questionable means, or profit directly by defrauding others
- It may mean by default all of us don’t deserve to be alive and have to earn that right, i.e. “earn a living”
These are arguably valid concerns about how unfair and cutthroat things are. Ironically,
money isn’t exactly always helpful in judging the values of others, as in their ethics and beliefs.
We don’t know what motivates them to live… except apparently money since they have so much of it.
Maybe the eat-the-rich types are already a step ahead in automatically assuming any affluence entails some level of terrible or even evil. But we’re not saying that money bad and it make people bad—a rich, kind person (if we can believe this exists) may be better than a poor, kind person.
What we are saying is that money is blind and can flow to good, generous people, bad, abusive people, and let’s not forget normal people going about their own business. Whether the world rewards bad people with more money than the rest is a question for Coffeezilla (and maybe later).
Anyway, it’s unlikely that society will change anytime soon in a way that redistributes money more evenly for everyone. Since capitalism’s operating system is not within our control and feeling resentful, jaded or demoralized about it doesn’t add value to our lives, perhaps it’s time to go back to the drawing board:
“How many of the world’s problems will be solved by each of us becoming better people, individually?”
Sam Harris, Waking Up
Values
Of course, even if zero problems get solved, a more actionable answer has probably less to do with money and more about values, including but not limited to:
considerateness and empathy (mentioned earlier), integrity, gratitude, humility, humour, sincerity, generosity, resilience, receptivity, discernment, patience, etc.
These are called “values” probably because if everyone applied them, the world might be a better place, so they’re positive.
These qualities aren’t just things we suddenly have because we decided to. They have to be developed in us, sometimes this process takes a long time, is difficult or complex. However, unlike making money, which requires others to buy what we’re selling, we have a lot more control over our values and how we act according to them.
We might ask, ““Why would I go through so much trouble for something that sounds so hippie woo-woo, and could potentially make me easy to take advantage of or boring?”
Generally, if we can’t or won’t, then don’t.
No one’s forcing us to develop our values or stick to them. It’s alright.
Whatever we understood values to be, we might at least be able to agree that making ourselves an easy target, or boring, is probably not going to add value to us or help us add value at large.
Being a good person
Let’s go back to the fact that we’re generally motivated to feel less terrible and bored in life.
“Terrible” can more specifically include distress, depression, pain, struggle, discomfort, and more such synonyms.
These things kill our “mood” and enjoyment in general. We don’t desire these things, so the more we have of them at points in our life, the lower our motivation is to live those days. It tends to show in our face, energy level and may even make those around us feel worse.
Therefore, being a considerate and empathetic person to someone facing these difficulties would generally add value to them. This type of presence would serve to alleviate pain and make life slightly more bearable, and at least increase the struggling person’s motivation to live through these tough times.
Discomfort and growth
“But going through hardship is what makes us grow and get stronger.” Yes, it does. “So, does being ‘considerate and empathetic’ count as coddling?”
Coddling can involve being overprotective, too lenient or even too generous. To some degree, for us to be considerate, we will likely step out of our way, beyond the autopilot efficiency of our usual living. We’d have to do extra: be more thoughtful, tactful, take time to inquire.
Personally, it’s not too much. Showing we care about how someone else feels neither directly makes their life easier, nor does it solve their problems.
It just might make them more motivated to keep moving forward in hard times, a possible extra source of strength.
In reversed roles, we don’t get to be coddled either, but we can potentially smile when others show more thoughtfulness and empathy toward us. We don’t get to behave badly because we’re going through a tough time. Our unfortunate circumstances at the time also don’t entitle us to others’ kindness. That’s their choice. It’s definitely not something we get to take advantage of or for granted.
But what if we can’t?
Assuming this suffering person isn’t entitled or exploitative, there could still be cases where we simply can’t afford to be considerate and empathetic.
We all have to be productive, the world keeps turning, things need to get done. These can be legitimate reasons preventing us from going the extra mile to be kind to others in their struggles.
Then don’t. Same as earlier.
We don’t have to be more considerate and empathetic than we normally would, genuinely. If we say we can’t do it, then we can’t do it. Our judgment can be trusted(-ish).
But since we all have to coexist together, when some of us are in the middle of personal problems and others aren’t, the least we can do is not make each other’s lives harder than necessary as we get things done. So, being normal still entails a little bit of considerateness and empathy anyway.
It might be worth noting that spending that little bit of time, showing that little amount of care might actually increase the efficiency of those struggling
in terms of performance while they’re in their low, or just getting back to equilibrium faster
compared to the time we saved brushing it aside to keep working. That absolutely should not be why we treat them well, it just could be an unintentional bonus side effect.
Last note, if someone is chronically struggling with no signs of returning to neutral, it might be worth investigating if the problem could be coming from within them as opposed to external circumstances. They’re called “inner” demons for that reason.
Some problems are unavoidably and immensely difficult, nobody said it was easy. In the face of what scares us, if we’re ever unsure or confused about whether or how to do anything, a simple first question could always be: does it add value (at no one else’s expense)?
Yes? Then godspeed. That’s the point of being alive.
Live well,
Phil