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August 18, 2006

The value of human life

Was almost stopped dead in the gym today, listening to Radio Open Source's wonderful episode on the value of human life. Aside from being horribly inappropriate listening when you're on a cross-trainer, this episode featured Feinberg, Singer and Hirschfield discussing what value can be placed on a human life. They all argued eloquently - and often movingly - but one consensus that they seemed to reach was that (whether or not human life is of infinite value) there is no value outside or 'above' it.

Maybe it was cause I was struggling with the pointless task of lifting heavy weights for no reason at the time, or maybe cause I'd just been listening to Alabama 3 singing about Power in the Blood* , but I couldn't help thinking about values that might go beyond human life (certainly, values that go far beyond my life).

The first, 'obvious' empirical point that springs to mind is that millions of people believe value springs from the will of a God, or something else that transcends human life. I don't believe in any kind of God, though, so for me this is a more ambiguous normative issue. To put the question in a provocative way - for all the bad terror that has taken place and is taking place in the world at the moment, for all the slaughter of innocents in New York, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Lebanon, and Israel and Palestine and far too many other places, is it still worth following Slavoj Zizek in arguing that what we need is the 'good terror', the kind of terror that is a key part of any radical political act. Is it still worth seeking a value that goes beyond my life, to seek a 'good terror' which (instead of the slaughter of countless innocent civilians) brings us radical political change? Is there an argument that we should focus not just on the value of life, but the value of living, and struggling, and sometimes dying, or have we now moved 'beyond' such values?

I'm not sure what the answer would be; I'm also not sure what it should be. At any rate, I'm grateful for a podcast that made me think about so many different questions.

* With the nice catchy chorus 'I don't mind dying/when my calling comes I will be ready for the war'...It is catchy, honest.

Posted by jon_mendel at August 18, 2006 12:10 AM