The Price We Pay

A bright and breezy day in Spring. Everything seems up in the air, and on its way. The windy weather seems to call for a suspension of disbelief. The racing clouds call for letting the world flow on without constant judgment.

I am not usually so light-hearted, or open-minded. Like you, I value my purchases according to my needs and resources. I have just bought new shoes at a street fair for 24 dollars; but who knows what value they had in China where they were made.

Anyway, I am happy to pay 24 dollars. A bargain. Years ago, Manhattan was bought for 24 dollars worth of beads and trinkets; also a bargain—and a tragedy. The Manahatta branch of the Lenape tribe were not displeased by the exchange, especially since they moved seasonally and had no clear concept of land ownership. They did not see what they were giving away. Soon after, their resulting dependence on European goods, and the need for fur to trade with the Europeans, resulted in over-harvesting of the beaver population in the lower Hudson, economic disaster and dislocation of the Native Americans. As they say, “the rest is history.”

Does this sad story disturb me? Now, walking down a street, surrounded by families in a festive mood, I recall a thought from the “Unbearable Lightness of Being”— “How can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”

Shall we forgive history? Or shall we cling to our grievances and our tribal grudges, to the delicious identity of victimhood? Is it this identity that gives us meaning and value?

What is the value of human life? Broken down into its basic elements and minerals, the human body is worth less than $4.50. However, vital organs have been assigned worth and the human heart has been calculated to have $57,000 in value.

Even more useful perhaps, your DNA can fetch 9.7 million, according to Wired Magazine; supposedly bone marrow can yield 23 million. The actual market rate may vary however—for how much does a Chinese or African receive for a kidney?

Chinese labor is certainly valued less— and apparently so are Chinese lives. We do not usually say so, but how much would you give to help a starving stranger in war torn Africa? That is the value you and I give, dear reader.

We may claim that human life is precious, but in this brutal capitalist civilization, many would set human value in terms of net worth and disposable income. This varies considerably. An article in Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine last week reports that the 25 highest-paid hedge-fund managers in the US had an average income of $540 million in 2006, with the top three pulling in over $1 billion each... The average among them earned nearly $1.5 million a day, every day, for the entire year—or over $1,000 every minute.

Doug Casey is editor and publisher of the International Speculator and author of "Crisis Investing," which spent 26 weeks as No. 1 on the New York Times Best-Seller list. He suggests that we should indeed set a monetary value to human life on a sliding scale. No doubt, he calculates his advantage. But Life Insurance companies do this work all the time. Hopefully they will distinguish determining the value of a human year of work from the value of the actual life. If depends whether you measure the flesh, the DNA, the heart or the unique human soul.

Dear reader: what is the value of your day? Of the next 24 hours? Do you place a value on it? How do you set a price tag on your human heart? Is the price just what people will give you? Will you negotiate a better price?

Justice reflects the value of human life we assign. Justice has often been in short supply for poor and minority groups because they are valued less by the powers that be. And now even torture is being rationalized. Though this abhorrent practice goes against the core teachings of the Abrahamic religions it apparently does not conflict with the cold-eyed pieties of social Darwinism. Habeus Corps and other basic legal rights fade along with memories of the guillotine. Last week the Justice Department asked the federal appeals court to limit lawyers to three visits with Guantanamo clients; allow their correspondence with prisoners to be opened and read; and give government officials the power to deny the lawyers access to evidence.

One legal fiction the Bush Administration has promoted is that non-citizens are not covered by basic rights out of the territories of the USA. At the same time, the administration claims that US citizens are covered by US laws everywhere they go.

Now that is privilege! Similarly, in “No Iraqi Civilians on Mount Hood” writer Jozef Hand-Boniakowski remind us that US media gives much more value to three American Mountain climbers lost in the snow than to tend of thousands of “faceless” Iraqis killed in our occupation. Instead, he observes, “Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz have stated that they “calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion”. Dividing the lower figure of $1,000,000,000,000 by the killing of 655,000 Iraqis yields a cost of $1,526,717.56 per Iraqi casualty. Right wing critics accuse the Lancet study casualty figures as being exaggerated. If that is the case, then the cost per casualty is even higher. Instead of placing infinite value on human life, we are placing a value on human death.”

In “The Value of Human Life” scholar Omid Safi adds this critique of US media: “We have to be clear about this point: our task is not to "humanize" Iraqis--one can only humanize something that is not already fully human. The Iraqis, exactly like us, already possess their full God-given humanity. If we have failed to see and interact with Iraqis on a human level, if we have not listened to their cries, seen their tears, mourned their deaths, it is because they have been presented to us as inhuman, subhuman, or nonhuman.”

Readers: we all know that to save the life of one human being--any human being--is to have saved the life of all humanity, and to take the life of a single human being, any human being, is as if to destroy all of humanity (Qur'an 5:32).

This essential Islamic value of human life is due to the presence of Divine spirit in all of humanity. The winds of possibility and ultimate and limitless compassion surround us at every step. According to the Qur'an, God breathed into each and every human being (Qur'an 15:29 and 38:72).

You and I have not begun to realize this challenge, the value of the human, beyond flesh, beyond social worth, identity or calculation. With the worth and dignity of every life in mind, in heart, perhaps we can begin to build from our own actions a world of 'adl instead of the mess we have now. O reader: what price would you pay for a better world?