Have You Been Saved? Part IV Value

Have You Been Saved Part IV—Value

This makes the fourth installment of our series. By way of review, SAVED is an acronym for a five-fold method of toning down the intensity of a situation, which stands for Safety, Attention, Value, Empathy, and Decency. Sometimes we are not aware of the things we say or do that cause others to become offended and angry, SAVED helps us avoid tripping over these obstacles. If we employ the five steps of SAVED in all of our encounters in life it will help us to not make a bad situation worse, and they can help in disarming hostilities of others, thus setting the stage for non-violent conflict resolution.

We have already looked at Safety and Attention, now let’s take a look at Value. To do this justice we must take a look at the bigger picture. In today’s society we tend to measure someone’s Value based upon his or her contributions to collective society. “Does this person contribute positively to society? Is this person an upstanding member that gives something of merit to others? Do they posses any attributes that our society (as a whole) deems as worthwhile?” These questions have become assumptions for most of us and their answers also have assumptions.

As a whole, we (society) have become accustomed (i.e. programmed through mass media and psychological marketing campaigns) to placing a value measurement on any human based upon these types of questions and if the answer to any of these questions is “No.” then we automatically place that person on a lower rung of the Ladder of Value. The concept of a Ladder of Value is the antithesis of a Level Playing Field. It has led to things like Hitler’s Holocaust of the Jews during WWII. He caused German society to place Jews on a lower rung of the Ladder based upon their ideology and religious beliefs. Today we are heading the same direction with things like “Lifeboat Ethics”. This is where an instructor tells the group to imagine that they are all in a lifeboat together and because there are too many of them the lifeboat is going to sink, they need to decide who will live and who will die. Then the group must vote on who stays and who goes (does this sound like any ‘Reality TV’ shows you are familiar with?), usually based upon who is more valuable to the group and society. One of the first times this was attempted, the people in the group devised a strategy of rotation where a certain number of people would get out of the boat for a specific amount of time. When the time was up, the same number of people in the boat would get out and the ones who had been in the water would get in, and the rotation went on in this fashion and they could all survive. The instructor was furious, because that is not how it was supposed to work!

Today, because some people don’t posses certain attributes, or their views or lifestyles do not conform to the consensus of Societal Norms, they (de facto) have less Value (you are the weakest link, goodbye!). This type of attitude has bled over to our interpersonal relational skills. Often times, when a person doesn’t agree with us in an area that we feel strongly about, we place less Value on them in our minds and automatically start treating them differently.

We have forgotten what Intrinsic Value means. As such, we tend to make judgments about people at a glance and therefore start treating people accordingly. This type of behavior can be the primary impetus for another person’s hostility, or at the least can become the key factor in causing the escalation of hostilities. Therefore, it is up to us to be aware of it, and remove it from the equation of our lifestyles.

If you communicate (verbally or non-verbally) to a person that you believe he or she is beneath you, such a person may feel the need to fight for their dignity, for the right to be treated as an equal, for respect. Respect must be earned. So must disrespect. Value need not be earned; it is intrinsic to every human being.

“But what if I do think the person is beneath me?”, you might ask. Well, let’s take a look at this. Why do you think that this person is beneath you? Is it because the answer to one of the question we talked about earlier was “No.”? You must train yourself to think differently about others. I personally define a person’s Value based upon my religious belief that every person on the face of the planet is created in Imago Dei—the Image of God, and therefore based upon that alone have Value. Every person is special and unique. There will never be another like him or her. That alone demands Value be placed upon this person.

My father collects coins, and if you talk to him about it at some point he will probably get out some of his collection and show it to you. Invariably, during the description of one of the coins he will tell you about the limited amount of this type of coin that has been produced. The limited production makes it rare, and therefore valuable. Some of the coins in his collection were mistakes made at the mint, offset stamping, double die (stamped), or both sides of the coin are heads, or something similar to that. These coins are not legal tender, they do not conform to the norms required of currency, but because of their unique qualities, because they are different from the other coins produced, they are rare, and therefore have an increased Value. This exemplifies the dichotomy that we have in society when placing Value. In currency if something is unique and different, even if it can’t be used, it is rare and extremely valuable, but if it is a person that is unique and different, and doesn’t contribute, it is worthless, beneath contempt. We must remember that unlike coins each person on the face of the planet is totally unique, there has never been, nor will there ever be another exactly like him or her. That uniqueness, or rarity demands that we place an extremely high Value on that person without consideration to merits, achievements, productivity, or usefulness.

“But, what if I still think that the person I am dealing with is beneath me?” If that is the case, then he might not be the ‘bad guy’ that is responsible for the conflict. Maybe it’s you.

So how does one demonstrate Value in another? Avoid labels of race, politics and statistics. You are dealing with a person not a demographic. In short, don’t be a snob. Have good manners and treat them as an equal, not like a piece of chattel. Finally, if you still really cannot place Intrinsic Value in others, at least try to demonstrate to them that you do Value them as a person, it may just save you a fight.

Mark Long

24 October 2005