In philosophy it is common to discuss the meaning of life or the purpose of life – but little discussion exists on the value of a life. Note that I am referring not to value of human life as a whole, but the value of an individual life – the value of my life right now.
Biological value
Is there value to my life as a living creature, the value of the biological organism of me as a human being? The Abrahamic religions, in particular Christianity, do not particularly debate this by saying that we are all created by God in it’s image and that we are all God’s children – thus since God has value by definition, each of our lives as biological creatures have value. This neatly resolves the issue of how to deal with other animals, despite many being not too dissimilar from a physical and emotional point of view, and in some cases arguably superior, to the biology of human beings. This religious view then easily provided justification for us to consume other animals for food or materials or just for sport.
However, there is another perspective to accommodate atheists or those that believe in evolution and not divine creationism. In this argument, the human creature is so amazing, so sophisticated, so advanced that just by virtue of its complexity and abilities, it certainly has to have value as a biological entity, although this view does not separate the biological value from the value due to capabilities.
On a pure biological basis, we can be looked at as simply a collection of atoms combined with chemical and electrical processes that work in a synchronized way to form an amazingly complex machine. And just like any complex machine, compromise of any one central component can render the entire machine useless. Similarly, one little issue like a bad heart, collapsed lung even a small aneurysm an make the human machine not viable anymore. Take this one step further – if there a human being that required some machine to keep it running, does that mass of atoms have value as a biological thing?
So, if you take away all my mental capabilities, all emotions and desires, all intelligence and experiences, then what is left – a machine made of flesh that consumes input, i.e. food, and creates energy and excretes the rest as waste. In fact, it is a machine with a pretty low efficiency ratio.
At this point, I see little value of me purely as a biological creature.
A small side note about euthanasia. Furthering the above thought, I do believe voluntary euthanasia should be legalized. If a person is at that point in their life, where there is little more than just a badly functioning biological machine left, then there should be no reason to preserve it. As well as it should be a person’s right to choose when the cost of continuing to live is too much and thus allow for medical assisted death.
Experiences and value
In his lectures on death, Shelly Kagan described a container theory of a human being, likening the physical body to just an empty container, that is available to fill up. We fill up our container body with experiences, which is what gives value. The beauty of our life, and thus its value, comes the collection of amazing experiences, from the little mundane ones like taking a flight for the first time to the major ones like watching your child being born or achieving some difficult feat. Just like a glass is just a glass, but when filled with liquor, it gains value. The human container has the capacity for almost seemingly infinite experiences limited only by our time in existence.
With a richness of experiences, gives one a sense of wisdom to share and impart. Experiences and the variety of experiences gives value to us. Experiencing the natural world gives us a true appreciation of other creatures, experiences with other humans gives us empathy, and so on.
But if the amount of experiences we collect defines our value, this leaves us with the difficult problem of ascribing little value to very young children as they have not had the chance to gain experiences and ascribe very high value to older people, assuming they have accumulated a lot of experiences. Note that it is possible that one just bides their time in existence in very limited and isolated conditions – thus amount of experience is not directly and linearly correlated with age.
This is where the potentiality of experiences comes in – the value of life depends on the potential to have experiences. A child has a tremendous ability to gain experience given their whole life ahead of them. One may not eventually gain all the experiences they had the potential for, but the potential did exist.
Meaning and purpose of life
Philosophers throughout the ages have tried to figure out the meaning of life which is often conflated, interchanged or confused with the purpose of life. We come into this life with nothing and when we die, we leave with nothing. In between is our existence, our physical life on earth. During our existence we do things, collect things, earn money, interact with others, reproduce and most importantly, have experiences. I look at the purpose of life closer to the things we do in life. Usually, we have different purposes for some periods of time throughout our life – a student’s main purpose is to study and get an education, a young mother’s purpose centers around taking care of her children. The purpose of life at any given time is necessary to live, but may or may not give meaning to life. A person can wake up each day, go to their labor, work all day, come home and then do it again the next day, over and over again. They have a purpose, to work and put food on their table, but this may not result in a meaningful life. There are many things that add meaning to life, and I have written about this in a separate essay, “Exploring the T’s of life” However, I resist including the meaning of life explicitly in the value of my life as many of the activities that create meaning are part of experiences, impact and other facets of the value equation.
Economic value
A very controversial topic is whether a human being has a monetary value that can be ascribed to it. To an economy, each individual has some value that they can or do contribute to the economy. Similarly, an individual has earnings potential and thus has economic value to those around them. In fact the US government actually says each US citizen has an economic value of about $5m. I am sure In a country like India or China, where human capital is more than plentiful, thus number would be a lot lot less. Thinking about monetary value can have some depressing results. At my age, my earning potential and thus contribution to the economy or even to my family, is somewhat limited. However, if I died today, my life insurance will probably be higher than that, implying I am worth more dead rather than alive!
The value of Impact
Another way I think about the value of my life is by asking “will anything change if I am not alive?” People die, loved ones are sad and say nice things at their funeral – but life is for the living and sure enough everyone moves on. After you die, do you leave a tiny void in the world, by people missing you for something like your wisdom, or things you did or the smile you invoked. If you leave an impact on this world and it’s people, then on your demise, that impact remains – whether it be something as simple as strong values you left behind for your children, or something you created that persists after your death – and thus your presence remains after your body is gone.
Assessing impact is tough however. When a wealthy person writes a large check for a cause, their impact really is not that much more than someone who does something small within their means – regardless of whether society perceives it differently. Thus, impact is a personal thing – it can be as small as doing little things to make the world a happier place for people around you or volunteering ones time or fighting for a cause. For a musician it is the music left behind for others to enjoy, for a poet is the lasting beauty of a thoughtful poem. There is no measure of impact, except on a personal level, one’s own honest assessment of whether it exists.
Value equation:
So, the value equation for my life now ends up looking something like this:
Value of my life = EG + PE + I + PI + EV
Where EG is the value of the Experiences Gained
PE is the potential for gaining more experiences and is usually a function of remaining life expectancy
I is the Impact on the world so far
PI is the potential for more impact, again usually a function of remaining life expectancy
EV is the Economic Value, which also diminishes with age.
Most of these are non-objective, but if you could somehow convert EG, PE, I and PI into a monetary value, the equation would give a value that could be compared against something – like the value of your life insurance.
But instead, we could create a score. Say we divide our life into 8 deciles, each of 10 years.
Each factor has a score between 0 and 1 for each 10 years.
At birth, EG = 0, PE = 8 as you have the full potential for experiences. Similarly, I = 0 and PI = 8. EV =5 if you reach your full economic value of 5 decades of work. So, the total value is 23.
At any age, you estimate each variable and come up with a score, e.g.
At the age of 40: Have you actively been seeking out experiences or been just biding your time? Let’s say you think you have been mediocre, so you give yourself 0.5 for each year for a score of 2. But you decide that you will make a conscious effort to seek our more experiences and set PE = 4. Similarly, Impact – if you have volunteered, helped people etc all your life, you may set I = 4 and PI = 4. For EV, you have worked 2 decades and have contributed well to both the economy and yourself and you expect to continue to , so EV is the full 5. Your overall score is 19 – which is great compared to the maximum of 23.
My value
This entire discussion is not to be taken as some kind of manifesto for justifying suicide. It is the opposite really. Ivan illitch in Tolstoy’s novel “The death of Ivan Iliych” suddenly found himself facing death and went through denial, anger, depression and finally resignation and acceptance – thus his death was far more painful and distraughtful to him and those around him than just the physical pain. I do not want to be in such a situation. By creating a framework for evaluating the value of my life from various angles, it give me the ability to assess where I am and in doing so, I am actually quote satisfied in knowing that my life did have value and thus if anything happened to me suddenly, I would go peacefully with no regrets about my life.