A person considers himself as important and valuable as the sum of his tangible and intangible belongings.
Tangibles
How much money you make, which car you drive, where you live, the clothes that you wear, the food that you eat, the places you visit. If you summed the financial value of all the tangible things in your possession, you would get a “number”, which would tell you how much you are “worth.” This is why rich people are considered more important in society – or at least looked up to, and why a homeless person may feel miserable for not having any stuff.
The problem with measuring yourself in this way is that there’s so much tangibles can do for your sense of fulfillment. If we were to think of a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being absolutely miserable, and 10 feeling very valuable, even if you are the richest man in the world, you would only get to 3 or 4 just with tangibles.
Intangibles
How famous you are, how powerful you are, the amount of relationships you have, how many people are you in charge of, how successful you are with the opposite sex.These intangibles that society considers high-status define how valuable we think we are.
With a decent and balanced number of material possessions and experiences, a good rating of intangibles gives a person a high degree of value. For example, if you have enough stuff to live well, time for your hobbies, a good number of strong friendships, a loving partner and are respected looked up to by your peers, chances are you consider yourself a valuable person.
The Conflict
My point behind this predictable analysis: intangibles get in the way of people understanding each other.
If you became an 8 because you are a womanizer, you’ll consider yourself as important and worthy of people’s respect as an 8 who got there by being a famous rock star, or a respected scientist. When the ways to measure ourselves are so many, a unified way of valuation becomes impossible.
This is why people will call others arrogant, jerk, incompetent, lazy and nerd. Because the areas that they consider interesting and respectful are the ones where they themselves are considered interesting and respected.
This does not mean that we don’t see value in others. It just means that it’s hard for a regular lawyer to consider a regular doctor as valuable and interesting as him.
It means that most groups of people think they are better than others (even though some may be right).
It means that we are clueless when judging someone’s value.
But most of all, it means that you have to ignore anyone that defines your worth because they have no idea what they are talking about.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Damn good post, Carlos.
The only question I have is this: should we even bother assessing the value of others, or should we change how we judge value? It seems like switching to another “system” of judgement would come with its own set of problems and still be inaccurate to me.
Perhaps. But if you are eating something and you don’t like it, you keep trying new food until you find the tasty one.
I had a realization moment a few weeks ago involving this principle. I was watching a Hayao Miyazaki film and felt a great appreciation inside of me of his amazing work. But alongside this appreciation, I realized that I would never even try to get to the level, or even close, to the level he’s at when it comes to animation. It’s not one of my goals.
But now it is a goal to be able to love and respect other people’s passionate work as much as my own. It’s difficult because I naturally don’t want to; I want to build myself up by breaking them down, but that’s no good. I can get over myself though.
As long as you realize that it’s not that easy to actually do it, sure, you’re right.
Another quality post man. You wrote; “you have to ignore anyone that defines your worth because they have no idea what they are talking about.”
Reminds me of why Ryan Holiday states why he writes on this blog; “I’ve always believed that if you don’t define yourself, other people will gladly do it for you–this blog is my attempt at that.” So connecting each points made by both of you, I have a question.
What are ways, tactics, strategies that we can use to prevent “others” from defining us? As Ryan suggests, should we do so by defining ourselves before others can, and do so through the tools such as blogs? Is that enough? Or should we even care what or how others define us, not letting such things consume our time, thoughts, and energies? I completely agree with you and have been reflecting upon this certain question for quite some time.
You should define yourself but for selfish purposes, to help you understand yourself. Others will define you even if you don’t, and focusing on that is a waste of every resource. We can’t prevent it. It’s not about before or after, it’s in spite of.
I like the conclusion. I recently wrote about the trouble with judging people as well. I’m struggling what to make about your comment in parentheses (even though some may be right) because its hard to define what makes a “better” person. Unless somebody somehow truly lives by good principles (which they may, but it seems rare) then they can’t really be considered better, unless its just in their own mind. Most likely they are different, which is great, but not better.
It’s all about value, not being better. Which group will be right when considering their value to society, a group of doctors or a group of thugs?
The most erroneous system humans have devised is the systems of measuring one’s value. How foolish we are to measure ourselves and others through possessions–intangible or tangible. The reality of life does not bother with our measurements, we have to realize that a person’s worth is the same for all.
I was with you until the end. Reality don’t care, sure. But we are all worth the same? We should all live properly and should have the same rights, sure, but we are all worth the same? Because if we are talking about worth to society, I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. The day the world considers a rapist, a thief, a murderer, a person in a coma as valuable as an activist or just a regular tax-paying productive individual, that’s the day I’m out.
And I’m going for the extremes, this is also true in many grays as well.
The bigger question is why do we feel compelled to value other people’s worth or value our own worth? It doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than to inflate one’s ego.
Of course we shouldn’t value other people’s worth. But it happens, I’m sticking to reality and dealing with it.
And because of that same reason, we need to value our own worth, because others we’ll define you. And it’s not about ego, it’s about confidence. It’s about tolerating all the BS that people will say about you during the course of your life and succeeding in the end. You need courage and confidence to do that.
Not to belabor the point, but if you don’t let others define you, then there’s no need to go through the process of valuating self worth. Besides, when you place value on yourself, then you place values on other people to see who are your peers. You then get in the ugly cycle thinking that “I am more important than that person.” While it may be reality, I would still choose not to do it. Reality presents us with a lot of things but free will lets us decide what we are going to do with them.
How do you prevent others from defining you?
Reality is also the thing that makes us compare ourselves to others. It’s not that some people choose to do it. It’s just another vice that humanity has.