By Noah Dawson

Of the absurdities parroted by those fancying themselves academics-or worse, intellectuals in general-few, if any, have had a more disastrous impact than misanthropy, both intentional and unintentionally arising from malpractice of other theory. Humanity is, in fact, quite remarkable! Countless reasons abound but encompassing most of these possible reasons is the fact our species belongs to that most special class, the class of rational beings. But, if human life is valued because reason is valued, why is reason valued? What is value anyways?

It is true of most things that value is subjective, as the Austrian School economists (whose views I am generally in agreement with) are fond of pointing out, but another characteristic of value, its ordinality, means that, in the case of human life, value must exist. This is true, because the ordinal nature of value tells us that, when we say we do not value something, we mean to say that we value some alternative more. Thus, even to someone who claims they do not value anything, they must really value something, and we can know from this that to be able to value is to value something. Even the indifferent person values indifference above decisiveness. (Or, to put it another way, we could quote the old Rush lyric: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.") So, every rational being values something, but how do we use this to prove the value of the life of a rational being?

Value can be defined as the subjective and ordinal ranking of various concepts by rational beings. Here, we do not mean, then, that value can have any cardinal number attached to it. This presents us with one issue immediately: Does the question of the value of human life have any meaning? To prove human life had positive value, we would need to have a scale that operated cardinally, not ordinally. Thus, we must restate the question in a way that has meaning. This can be done by first examining what does not have value. By doing this, we can examine if there is a concept that necessarily does not not have value. If this is done, that is logically equivalent to proving that there is something that necessarily has value.

If we are to look for something we can call without value on an ordinal scale of valued concepts, the bottom of the scale seems like a good place to start. Since whatever concept is at the bottom of the scale can only have less value than the other concepts on the scale, it is the closest we can get to saying something is without value, as some other concept will always be more valuable than it. (In other words, the concept at the bottom of the scale can only have negative value relative to other concepts.)

Now, is there some concept that cannot ever be placed at the bottom of a valuing being’s scale? In fact, there is at least one thing: The capacity of a valuing being to value, as it must be above the concept of not having the capacity to value. To prove this, we can show that a valuing being must have some concepts on their scale. Even a valuing being claiming to be indifferent values, as they value indifference above decisiveness. They then cannot help but value the capacity to value above the concept of not having the capacity to value, as they do value some concept over another concept. Even if they claim to not value the fact that they value one concept over another concept, they would instead be admitting that they actually still value the concepts in a reverse order to what they first believe. So, an indifferent person who says that they do not value the fact that they value indifference over decisiveness is really a decisive person in denial, in which case they actually do value decisiveness over indifference and their capacity to value over not having the capacity to value. Thus, as a valuing being’s own capacity to value cannot be at the bottom of their scale of values, we can say that it necessarily has value.

There are two moves left though, in order to prove that human life has value. First, it must be realized that a valuing being must value its own life, as being alive is prerequisite to valuing one’s own capacity to value, and that each must then value immortality.

Second, we must connect the fact that a valuing being values its own life to the value of human life. To prove this, let us examine a scenario where only two humans exist, person A and person B. We know that each values their own lives and wants to be immortal. But, if person A thought that not valuing person B’s life would lead to immortality, person A would have reason to value the death of person B. But, if person B were to see person A as a threat to their own life, they would have reason to value the death of person B. Thus, person A could not value the death of person B, as it would mean person B would value person A’s death, which is a contradiction. So, from this example, we can see that a person in general cannot not value the life of another person, as doing so would mean devaluing their own life.

Now, there are several obvious objections that may arise, including the fact that suicide and murder exist and the fact that it seems that the strong have no need to worry about retaliation from the weak. For those who commit murder and suicide, the only explanation is that they have not logically thought through their valuations or are simply in denial. They are acting in a way that does not effectively give them what they value. This is no different from a person who makes a bad investment because they did not carefully consider the facts of the matter. As for the strong and weak, the simple fact is that weakness, even death, is not necessarily permanent. Every day, there are people who are declared dead and later resuscitated. Some future technologies may further expand upon this. (It should be noted that the fact that death is not necessarily permanent does not mean that one does not value one’s own life, as the permanence or lack thereof death is not the important factor. The important factor is that the dead cannot value, and a valuing being values being able to value.)

To summarize the argument, self-hate is a state of confusion and hatred of others is self-hate and is therefore also a state of confusion. So, this serves as a positive argument that human life has value. It may not well sit with the nihilists, but nothing ever sits with them.

There is one other thing to examine: does anything besides a valuing being, the ability to value, have objective value? No. No non-rational thing has the capability to value the way a rational being does, and the ability to value is what gives rationally valuing beings their objective value.

I had intended from here to include some examples of misanthropy in intellectualism, especially the kinds that have caused widespread harm. In fact, I had written some, but they turned this piece that is already over one thousand words into one that is over two thousand words. I may eventually publish them through my column as a sequel to this one, or I may put them into a book. In any case, you can rest assured that I have much more to say on this subject.

I want to say to my readers how thankful I am, especially for their patience regarding this sprawling edition of my column. Without you, I might as well just be shouting into the void! But, above all, I want to say to my family how thankful I am for them. I hope everybody has a happy Thanksgiving.