When society is telling someone is a better person, they’re attributing less worth to them.
Ooh, here’s a good example: in Shakespeare’s time a “saint” was slang for someone who had cognitive challenges.
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?
Edit to add: okay, that was me being kind of a dick.
Can I please get the definition of the word “worth” that’s being used here, as it’s clearly different from mine?
I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation about what anyone or anything was “worth,” except maybe at a pawn shop. I think in some places and demographics it’s just not part of our vocabulary, so of course we’re not going to get all the layers of irony and multiple meanings that could be attached to it.
But if we’re talking about virtue, then we might observe that somebody who is rich and powerful doesn’t have to be a good person. People who are expected to perform “virtuousness” all the time are people with no privacy and no control over their lives.
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I do not want to speak for anyone (especially if I do it incorrectly, so please correct me if I got it wrong, @gadgetgirl!), but I think the point ol’ Gadge is making can be illustrated well if one assumes (as I do) that there does not exist a benevolent Deity standing by to reward the virtuous in an afterlife… or even to bless them with earthly rewards before they expire.
In such a world, the philanthropic person who gives away every last cent to charity, the tireless volunteer who labors faithfully and without complaint to heal the sick, comfort the dying, protect the helpless, teach the children, and/or preserve the life, limbs, and property of the imperiled… those benevolent souls are customarily lauded in our society as “saints” or “heroes” or “angels,” and far too often people will nod sagely and murmur that those folks are surely destined for a grand reward in the afterlife. There is an expectation that God will reward such benevolence, and the rest of us humans are expected to admire it, perhaps imitate it, maybe chronicle it in an inspirational book… but there is very little actual social pressure to dig into our own pockets and actually reward that behavior ourselves. Our society is set up to punish people who steal food for their hungry children. A sizable part of our population is uncomfortable with that… but then imagines that God, at least, would forgive such a transgression, so we can feel a bit better that victims of poverty and injustice will at least be rewarded in the afterlife… freeing us from the obligation to bust our own asses to create an actually just system here on earth.
There is no actual benefit to being called an “angel” or a “hero” or a “saint.” Calling someone worthy does not actually confer any useful worth upon them. Talk, as always, is still cheap, probably cheaper than ever.
The way I read this, which is not the only way and may not even be specifically correct to GG’s intent, is that when I see someone helping other people, someone might wonder why I don’t do the same. “Oh, she’s a better person than I am” basically just answers the question as a fait accompli, since every Leaderboard in our society that ranks people by How Good They Are is an artificial (and in my mind completely meaningless) construct. “You’re a better person” does not imply that I have any intention to try to emulate that behavior. It’s saying, essentially, “you’re gonna go to heaven” or get some other illusory brownie points that do not amount to a hill of beans. And there’s another insidious subtext attached: “because you have the time, energy, and resources to expend on helping the needy, your time, energy, and resources MUST be plentiful and, therefore, cheap and valueless to the People Who Actually Matter.”
I also think @jerwin means to show “bless your heart” as a similar example of a polite-seeming display of contempt. I do not believe jerwin is actually trying to be rude by actually deploying such veiled contempt. I could be wrong, of course.
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Yeah, the first three things that come to mind when attaching the idea of worth to a person are self-worth (which attaches almost seamlessly to “perception of own virtue” in my mind), Mjolnir (which seems also to measure some form of virtue, though perhaps from a warrior’s perspective), and the character of Mr Nutt from Unseen Academicals (who is on a quest to “acquire worth”, “worth” meaning “that you leave the world better than when you found it”).
Trying to fit any of those examples into the statement “When society is telling someone is a better person, they’re attributing less worth to them” just leads to an A=¬A logic error.
On the other hand, someone rich and powerful is also often famous, and thus are under a level of scrutiny that the rest of us aren’t. If I say something horrible, I have the advantage of relative anonymity, even in the physical world. But if, for example, Shia LaBoeuf goes on a racist tirade…
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I generally operate under that assumption. I don’t think there’s actually someone or something enforcing “goes around, comes around”; I just tend to notice that my life goes better if I treat people kindly. Some of it might be an attitude thing; some of it might be people reciprocating kindness with kindness; some of the stranger bits might be sheer random chance.
Now, the idea of “other people’s perception of your virtue, plus a toonie, will get you a cup of coffee”… That makes sense to me. I don’t entirely agree with it, but it computes. But that implies a world where both virtue and its lack are equally worthless, which doesn’t jive with what GG is saying equating “better person” to “less worth.”
Looks like this film might be germane to the topic:
https://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-moral/#H3
In Thomism, A virtue is a habit of thought that encourages one to act as god desires, a vice is a habit of thought that leads one away from god.
(or, if you prefer substitute the “good life” for god, but then I’d think you’d be moving out of Thomism.)
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