Five reasons why I think it’s unhelpful connecting our intrinsic worth to our instrumental worth (or anything aside from being conscious beings):
Undermines care for others (and ourselves): chickens have limited instrumental worth and often do morally questionable things. I still reckon chickens and their suffering are worthy of care. (And same argument for human babies, disabled people and myself)
Constrains effective work: continually assessing our self-worth can be exhausting (leaving less time/attention/energy for actually doing helpful work). For example, it can be difficult to calmy take on constructive feedback (on our work, or instrumental strengths or instrumental weaknesses) when our self-worth is on the line.
Constrains our personal wellbeing and relationships: I’ve personally found it hard to enjoy life when continuously questioning my self-worth and feeling guilty/shameful when the answer seems negative
Very hard to answer: including because the assessment may need to be continuously updated based on the new evidence from each new second of our lives
Seems pointless to answer (to me): how would accurately measuring our self-worth (against a questionable benchmark) make things better? We could live in a world where all beings are ranked so that more ‘worthy’ beings can appropriately feel superior, and less ‘worthy’ beings can appropriately feel ‘not enough’. This world doesn’t seem great from perspective
Despite thinking these things, I often unintentionally get caught up muddling my self-worth with my instrumental worth (can relate to the post and comments on here!) I’ve found ‘mindful self-compassion’ super helpful for doing less of this
Five reasons why I think it’s unhelpful connecting our intrinsic worth to our instrumental worth (or anything aside from being conscious beings):
Undermines care for others (and ourselves): chickens have limited instrumental worth and often do morally questionable things. I still reckon chickens and their suffering are worthy of care. (And same argument for human babies, disabled people and myself)
Constrains effective work: continually assessing our self-worth can be exhausting (leaving less time/attention/energy for actually doing helpful work). For example, it can be difficult to calmy take on constructive feedback (on our work, or instrumental strengths or instrumental weaknesses) when our self-worth is on the line.
Constrains our personal wellbeing and relationships: I’ve personally found it hard to enjoy life when continuously questioning my self-worth and feeling guilty/shameful when the answer seems negative
Very hard to answer: including because the assessment may need to be continuously updated based on the new evidence from each new second of our lives
Seems pointless to answer (to me): how would accurately measuring our self-worth (against a questionable benchmark) make things better? We could live in a world where all beings are ranked so that more ‘worthy’ beings can appropriately feel superior, and less ‘worthy’ beings can appropriately feel ‘not enough’. This world doesn’t seem great from perspective
Despite thinking these things, I often unintentionally get caught up muddling my self-worth with my instrumental worth (can relate to the post and comments on here!) I’ve found ‘mindful self-compassion’ super helpful for doing less of this