Our Value Is Not Equal

Somebody please tell me what I'm about to say is unnecessary. Somebody tell me that what I am thinking is false. If you do, you've bought into what I'm going to rant about next. You, friend, have bought into self-validation. You have willfully ignored the reality of your inevitable fall into pride. And I in return am here to make sure that my pride no longer gets control of me. The irony and hilarity of it all is that no matter what either side says or does, we're both wrong and therefore this article has nothing worthwhile to say.

I never am amazed at how low the human condition can fall. We continually strive to hit new barriers of destruction each day, and we're increasingly getting better at being worse. In all this there is the argument that God has in a sense created us all equal, and on top of that He's bestowed upon us the gift of opinion, as if your opinion is equal to mine in every respect.

It's not.

I'm going to do my best to voice why it's not, both in clarity and in consistency. It's not in the Bible explicitly, albeit there are arguments about how the poor ought to be given equal treatment as the rich (book of James gets into great deal on partiality and how we tend to favour the more fortunate). The Bible otherwise tends to lean on the hinges that there are some people just a little more valuable than others.

First look at authority: if our presidents had less value than we do, they'd not be able to veto bills and pass others without much struggle. They would be placed on an equal plane, meaning their position would not include anything but the ability to carry out the express wishes of every single person in this country, and every single person would be granted absolute equality in this decision.

I'm now laughing out loud at the absurdity of this judgment.

Has anyone walked into a social services office lately? Has anyone worked the welfare system? Has anyone critiqued that system perfectly? I certainly have not, and I doubt you have either. Can we then be sure that everyone who has financial need is getting equal benefits? No we cannot, and I have personal experience in this area.

A certain member of my extended family (either on my side or my wife's, will remain confidentail for safekeeping) was on welfare for a hefty sum each month. By hefty I mean more than I earn working my job alone. This individual has mouths to feed, whether it's their children or someone's their caring for, so the need was there. The question was, why was this need there?

The need arose out of laziness (their choice not to work) and then out of irresponsiblity (once getting employment, the individual receding into deeper depravity by not notifying the govt. about their new found income). The person to my knowledge is still receiving the same amount of money off our tax dollars as they were before they had a job. This person spends hundreds a week on jeans, handbags, and junk food. This person owes my wife and I 1200 dollars. This person owes the govt. a whole lot more than that once they find out about this 'crime.'

What is this stating? It's displaying a few human sins:

1- I am irresponsible for not taking the measures necessary to avert the crisis.

2- Our status in this country is determined not by an all-out equality of persons, it's determined by corrupt beauracracy and local govt.

3- This individual is mooching off our taxes like a leech off your blood, and uses the money irresponsibly on trivial pursuits of 'happiness' that she and her drugged-up boyfriend deserve.

Displays of human depravity keep popping up all over my life, but this is a prime example of how someone who is considered 'needy' without merit to that neediness, nor the necessary research to discover if this need is out of circumstance or out of laziness, shows that some people have more rights than others.

A little wake up call: you are not equal to your neighbor. You are either worth more or less, but never equal. People cannot judge without partiality, we will always have bias. It is not the beauty of creation, it's the destructiveness of sin and human condition. Our pride tells us we're worth more, our pride tells us 'it's cool' to have an opinion that rebels against common law, our selfishness tells us that we can trample on others' rights as we pursue our own contentment through corruption of the beneficence of others!

You turn on the TV and a man is allowed to live on the streets after fifteen meager years in the slammer after he murdered his wife. Let's say for the sake of argument this man is...Johnny Depp. He's a hot movie star with lots of money, and he doesn't even live permanently in America. In an American court he is ruled as guilty of first degree murder and passed on to his 15 year sentence, during this time of course he manages to star in a 150 million dollar flick (how he does, we still would be perplexed by). He is released on paroll and house arrest for another 5 years. Now the same thing happens to Martin Valasquez (some random guy I made up for the sake of the stroy) who is a legal immigrant who is an American now for just 3 years. He gets 25 years in jail, and then 7.5 years on paroll. Then there's Henry Smith, a white American construction worker who has the same exact story and the same exact court with the same exact judge as the other two men, and he's thrown in for 40 years and 10 years on paroll. He's 37...meaning he's under chains for life.

This is an example of a partial system: we treat celebrities like God because we worship them. Our society is centred around them in their godless and reprobate existence! We watch American idol hoping one day to have the winner's third album (can they be successful after that?) on our shelves. We watch movies hoping that we'd be able to be like them too. We read articles with Britney Spears more than we do with the local church and what is going on in our cities for the betterment of our society.

Immigrants generally get better treatment, albeit hardly ever like my illustration. They're tax exempt for a certain amount of years (which many end up abusing in the end) and get college scholarships and grants like candy is given to a rich baby.

Those born in this land and are not considered 'special' by the government can be said to have less rights. You're not tax exempt, you're not going to get bail that you can afford, and you're certainly not missing lethal injection if you do something to deserve it (O.J. Simpson). Paris Hilton spent less time in jail than Sallie Jones next door for doing something worse...and we blinked at it and said nothing. We did this because we can't do anything about it, she has more importance in society than you or I do.

Not only are our rights on a different plane, but so are our opinions. Some people's opinions matter more, just ask Ebert and Roper about reviews. Their opinions are the most highly coveted in the entertainment business and their reviews outrank Joe Schmoe's at the Chicago Tribune's. That's the reason they get what they get: they are valued more as opinion givers. Call it their gift, or call it the bias of mankind.

Your opinion therefore matters either more or less than mine. You can disagree with this article, but then you're not necessarily going to be considered right in doing so because it's highly possible most people will find my opinion more valuable than yours, so my words have more right and my voice is a higher level of 'sophistication' than yours is. My writing may be total crap, the value in an absolute sense meaning less than a two-year-old's written in crayons...but if someone who is worth a whole lot (let's say Stephen King) likes what I have written and hires me, my words are worth more than yours.

This contrasts the absolute beauty of an artwork. True artistic beauty is an absolute concept. A good movie is good not because Ebert says so, but because the truest sense of art if protrayed: the human condition, the depravity of man, the incorruptible nature of good, the total destructive power of evil, the happiness of true joy through true love, etc. True art is something that cannot be rated by opinion. I could list what is considered good art (a lot of people consider Shakespeare to be good art, but that is an opinion and therefore, as I said before, worth either more or less than the absolute truth is concerned).

When saying that some form of art is terrible, you are actually opening a window to your heart in the process. You are stating 'my human condition believes this is repulsive, so I myself must not be capable of admiring this art.' Can someone else admire the art? Most certainly, but the question that underlies the problem: is the art in question beautiful? If it is, what does that say about the person repulsed by it? What does it--even more-so--say about the person attracted to it? The same principle is connected with our value. If you are entranced by those considered more valuable (celebrity, what does it say about your own inability to define good versus bad persons? What does it say about your ability to recognize blatant interference on your right (assuming we are all created equal) as a human being to be on equal plane with that celebrity? Few celebrities would give up their riches and say honestly that we are all equal. They love their money and fame far too much, if they didn't they'd give it up (some have done this, so it's not necessarily universal).

The complex of the human mind is simple: we believe and act as if people are on different value shifts. Some are worth trillions, some billions, others millions. Some people have an opinion worth listening to, others do not. Some determine art is good, others don't. There is in a sense NO ABSOLUTE avoidance from relativity. Good art, good people (there's none) are determined by people who are determined to be better, in a sense, than you or I. Two people can walk out of the same movie and have differing opinions, but both opinions are not equal. The opinion's significance will be determined by more significant people, and instead of applying the opinion to the unfailing unbiased requirement of 'good art' (or the unfailing requirements of good morals) like it ought to be, we assume that the one in less popular stance is false and the one validated by the better man is true.

You and I are not equal, and if you believe we are, tell that to yourself because deep down you too hold a bias that self-validates you as a more important individual. Your words may one day be featured in Forbes and on that day it will have been unanimously decided by one man deemed more valuable than you and I that your words are indeed more valuable than mine.

And there is nothing I can do about that.

--TK