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Bing Wu · 01-03-2007, 05:34 PM

I am not sure any person is worth any more than any other, we all come from the spiritual realm and so are special in our own way. We all want to contribute meaningfully and all of us have our purpose for being here.

At any given point, the life we have manifested may not appear to be all that worthwhile. Even our patron saint Steve Pavlina (and I mean that in a positive way) was once a criminal sitting in a jail cell, probably at a lower level of existence than most of the people on this forum now... that was at a different time in his life. But clearly the value of his value was much more than met the eye!

I think it's important therefore that we regard each person for the immense power and potential they hold within them, not for what they appear to be at first glance. Being an economist by training, I know of the myriad ways in which we can value someone's life - simply ask yourself how much you'd be willing to pay to reduce your risk of lethal cancer from, say, 20% to 15%, and that's 5% of your life... multiply that by 20, and you get the statistical value of your life. If you value that reduction in risk at $100,000, then your life is worth $2,000,000 (we are using a number of sweeping assumptions here, though).

But we must remember that even people at the bottom of the social scale can, given the opportunity, be transformed into powerful people who contribute immensely to the quality of life on Earth. And that has a value greater than the few million dollars we might value their life at. How much of an effect do you suppose Steve has had on his entire readership? My guess is that it's somewhere in the billions.

01-03-2007, 05:34 PM	#18 (permalink)
Bing Wu Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: San Francisco, CA, USA Posts: 459	I am not sure any person is worth any more than any other, we all come from the spiritual realm and so are special in our own way. We all want to contribute meaningfully and all of us have our purpose for being here. At any given point, the life we have manifested may not appear to be all that worthwhile. Even our patron saint Steve Pavlina (and I mean that in a positive way) was once a criminal sitting in a jail cell, probably at a lower level of existence than most of the people on this forum now... that was at a different time in his life. But clearly the value of his value was much more than met the eye! I think it's important therefore that we regard each person for the immense power and potential they hold within them, not for what they appear to be at first glance. Being an economist by training, I know of the myriad ways in which we can value someone's life - simply ask yourself how much you'd be willing to pay to reduce your risk of lethal cancer from, say, 20% to 15%, and that's 5% of your life... multiply that by 20, and you get the statistical value of your life. If you value that reduction in risk at $100,000, then your life is worth $2,000,000 (we are using a number of sweeping assumptions here, though). But we must remember that even people at the bottom of the social scale can, given the opportunity, be transformed into powerful people who contribute immensely to the quality of life on Earth. And that has a value greater than the few million dollars we might value their life at. How much of an effect do you suppose Steve has had on his entire readership? My guess is that it's somewhere in the billions.