The Value We Place

 On my way to the post office last week, I passed one of those very artisanal, artsy, boho kind of gift shops - you know the ones, with organic soy candles and perfumes and handcrafted ugly clothing and extremely over-priced tchochkes that are 'locally made' - the kind of shop that sports dried flowers and hay bales and is featured in lifestyle magazines named 'country life' etc etc. You get the picture....

Anyways, as I passed the shop, I noticed a large milk urn out the front of the store with bunches of cotton branches - real dried cotton branches literally just cut off the plant and bundled together. At first I was amused - mainly because I grew up surrounded by the stuff. Not only did I live on a cotton property outside of a small country town, but my best friend's father also managed a cotton gin - if I wasn't surrounded by cotton plants in various stages of growth, ripening and harvest, I was playing in massive piles of cotton seed and getting it throughout ALL of my clothing! My mum would often work the module builder (a massive rectangular machine that makes cotton modules which are kind of like huge building sized bales of cotton) and if the module was high enough us kids could jump into the builder itself and jump on top of the masses of white fluffy cotton. 

(Just as an aside, this is EXTREMELY dangerous, children have died from suffocation in cotton module builders after not getting out quick enough and having the next load dumped on them - DO NOT DO THIS! EVER!) 

So, let's just say that I spent a good part of my young life surrounded by the stuff - that and sorghum, and barley, and chickpeas that my dad would keep in his pockets and chew as he walked amongst the plants. Both properties my dad and grandfather worked were dryland cotton before my grandfather sold up and moved into town, and neither were doing very well. The pests were a constant problem, and we spent more money on chemicals than we made. In the end, selling up was the only thing we could do. 

Upon closer inspection of these bundles my heart sunk into my boots and I let out an involuntary gasp.....these bunches of twigs, of which there were several in this urn, had a little cardboard tag next to them that read....

$39 ea

Say what now?!!! 

Thirty-nine dollars for a bundle of cotton twigs!!!!!!!!!! 

I couldn't believe what I was seeing!!!

As I walked back to the little takeout shop where my friend and korean chicken order were waiting for me, I marvelled at how crazy that was, and how exasperated my father and grandfather would have been seeing that. For two men who literally shed blood and tears to make money out of a struggling cotton farm, it would be so incredible it borders on the insulting. It makes you wonder what all that effort and angst and pain was for when you can sell a bundle of cotton buds on twigs for that kind of money! 

It made me think about the fragile nature of value - both in terms of money and in terms of emotional and personal value. In a westernised, capitalist society that is still reeling from a decade of neoliberalist government value tends to be still very much tied up in how much someone can contribute financially to the economy - it's all about figures and bottom lines. This kind of thinking leads society to a very utilitarian mindset - the greatest good for the greatest number etc etc. It's that same thinking that causes people to often ask of those trying to do some good "why bother?" - if you're only benefitting one human being, what is the point? We often don't see value unless it is in very concrete terms. Heck, one of the central tenets of my job includes the phrase "value for money". It's something that social workers are constantly having to wrestle with: justifying our existence by appealing to this very bottom line mentality while at the same time insisting with all the strength we can muster that there is a value far beyond that of the material. 

And then, why not make it personal - how much do I view my own value? Someone might look at me, much like I look at that bunch of cotton branches and think to themselves - dime a dozen right? If I dropped dead tomorrow, my workplace would replace me and that's the truth. I'm just one of hundreds of workers all doing a similar job all following the same policies and procedures. Value viewed from the outside can often miss what is inside and often it is what is hidden that is most valuable.

And then we have to ask ourselves what we see as valuable at all - does humanity have within itself an inherent value that is unattached to any particular attribute or function? I believe it does - it's the same reason I believe in the work that I do, its fundamental to my Christianity and to my worldview that humanity is made by God and therefore has a value that rises far beyond the earthly. I reckon if you asked most of those in leadership they would agree - however, does what we DO reflect that? Does our societal structures and policies and norms reflect that intrinsic value? 

And if I believe that about others, does that bear out in the way I treat myself? hmmmm 

I'm talking to myself as much as to anyone else - what value do I place upon myself, my happiness, my worth as a human being? And do I link that to what I contribute, or is that just because I am here? It's too easy to see our worth as being tied to what we DO for others, how we contribute to society, whether we are adding to someone or something in some way, but the truth is, if we believe that humanity has a value beyond that, then I think we as a human race would act very differently towards each other. And I KNOW that if I lived in congruence with that belief, I would act and speak very differently towards myself.