The Value of a Life

Judith Butler likes to talk a lot in her book how not all people are mournable. That some people have been dehumanified and thus their deaths are not as important as real humans. I think she has a point that not all deaths are equal but she draws the wrong conclusion from this. She assumes that since some people’s death means more to us than other that we devalue the others. I think it’s the other way around. That natural state between two human beings is one of not caring. Someone in China right now is probably dying, but I don’t know them and have no connection to them so I don’t care. This isn’t because I devalue them, it’s because I haven’t gotten to know them and thus haven't assigned any value to them.

In February my grandfather died, somewhat unexpectedly. The two of us were very close and his death hit me pretty hard. Then a few weeks ago an old friend of mine from high school committed suicide. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years and while we were friends we weren’t that close. While his suicide was a little shocking, I more or less went about the rest of my day as usual. His death effected me more than some random person in Africa, but it didn’t crush me. I didn’t devalue him relative to my grandfather, but I did value my grandfather more.

So what does this mean? Well Judith Butler seems to be saying that we need to stop devaluing other people. But we aren’t doing that. It’s just that we never got a chance to know those people. Thus I propose that what we need to figure out how to do is build connections between different groups of people so that we begin to know them, and thus value them.

Matt Bank