“Everyone has value” — such would be the mantra of a genius of kindness, if ever such a person were to have existed. For this is the most difficult mantra by which one could live one’s life, in that there are so many ways of claiming to live by it while simultaneously ignoring the spirit of its words.
It is the pith of this statement that makes adherence thereto so difficult. Just reflect upon it: it does not say “everybody has value, but not equal value.” If all that the statement meant to say were better clarified thereby, then it would have the following consequence: it would relate another human subject to me as though that human subject were to be considered as nothing other than an object for me. To say that not everybody has equal value would, in the end, require of me that I be an arbiter of human value — I would have to choose whom I value, and whom not, by virtue of my standard.
But this would be an absurd movement: for in the first place, who am I to judge the “value” of another human being, if I know not their innermost thoughts and fears; if I know not the wars in which they were victors or conquered; if I know not the men and women whom they have loved and lost? In the second place, to speak of a human being as having some relative sense of “value” automatically objectifies that person, insofar as I am asking what value that person has in light of his or her external predicates. But there is something in people that runs far deeper than the deeds they have performed and the thoughts they have come to, and that depth is grounded in their unique consciousness as human beings of the world, which gives each one of them a window into it that nobody shall ever match. For this reason, one must not treat other people as valuable only insofar as their outward trappings suggest; I shall never comprehend another human consciousness in my own and, therefore, I could never be a judge of the objective value of another.
But perhaps that emendation is too strong; what should happen if we change the statement to read, “everybody has value, but not equal value for me?” And therein lies the rub. For what person, if he or she be not friendless and without family, could claim to treat other people as though they were equally valuable to him or her? And in fact, most people who claim to understand the mantra that “everybody has value” live rather by this modification thereof. These people claim very perfunctorily that they have not insight into the motivations and goals of other people, but that they understand that they do have value in themselves, and that they are therefore due the basic respect to which all in our human community are owed. They only disclaim the ability to discern the value of the people of whom they are less than fond; therefore, though well they concede that they know that these others do have value in themselves, they argue that naught could induce them to know their value itself.
I admit that I am one of such people, and I would venture the guess that many people are stuck at this level of understanding the mantra, unable at all to go any higher. But that is perfectly all right, for the genius of kindness is exceedingly rare amongst us human beings. Anybody, however, who despairs of following the mantra to the fullest and therefore despairs of following it at all has lost the kernel of its potency. For though the path it prescribes be arduous and difficult beyond comprehension, it is not the attainment of the destination upon which everything is to be lost or won. If this mantra can show us only the way, and if every day we are able to take but one step forward, then let that to have been sufficient! Let us, even if we cannot come to value all human beings the way it demands, at least try with an open heart to do so, reckoning at naught our possibly fundamental incapacity thereof — for oft has it been said that the “perfect is the enemy of the good,” and indeed, I have seen too many good people turn to the opposite extreme in despair ever of emulating this genius of kindness.
For I confess that I, too, am in despair. I have hitherto made only the intellectual movement: I can only recognize this one part in abstracto: that what the Christians say about Christ, that he was the particular in the universal and the universal in the particular, I say about People in general. For each consciousness is unique, absolute and self-contained unto itself, and nobody could ever enter into another consciousness — that is the universality of the individual. And yet, at the same time, it is the selfsame curse upon humanity that we can never enter into another consciousness, because this incapacity consigns us to particularity; in being contained in myself as an absolute consciousness, I shall never ever be able to understand another human being in a way that he or she could possibly find meaningful, and thus am individuated into myself. If anybody were capable of uniting this particularity with that universality, that person would then be the genius of kindness — one to whom the full meaning of the phrase “everyone has value” would be fully and at once revealed. And yet, I despair of such a person ever existing: perhaps Jesus was one such a man, but he was supposed to be the Son of God, so that’s kind of cheating, if you think about it.
Nevertheless, try.
