Ive been wondering a lot about the concept of VALUE. The concept of value has me so stumped... Ive been reading economic papers on value and product value and market research on value... Scientists AND mathematicians have NO established formula for determining the value of something.... Remember the anomaly of that piece of toast being sold on eBay that had an image of Jesus on it for something like $20,000??? I always thought that determining value was a definitive thing... This car costs that, that piece of fruit costs this, if you want this you have to pay that... I know Im demonstrating my naïveté and ignorance here, but these topics or subjects never really interested me before in this way and to this extent. Im thinking about this book Im still reading called The Sense of Being Stared At where the writer speaks of the phenomenon that occurred when the footwear Hush Puppies takes off at a grassroots level. How it went from minuscule to massive in a short couple of months... The writer never really DID determine where all the demand grew from. Im thinking still about the video of that woman walking through NY and that one guy saying,There goes $1,000. And I wonder what ideas in his head brought him to that observation and that dollar figure...? Was it face value? Her body? Her face? Or was it imagined value? Him thinking of how she would perform in bed? Or how he would appear to others if she was on his arm? Im thinking too about a musician I know of who toured the world... And came back to home... And started creating art by sploshing paint onto canvas and framing them with old barn boards... And people were buying them for $1200 a pop!!!!! Now was that currency exchanged for true face value? Or was the currency exchanged for sentimental value because this particular musician made them? I am also thinking of a video I just saw of Yoko Ono walking into an Art Gallery and performing her interpretation of Firework by Katie Perry. The piano started out lovely and stayed lovely throughout the entire piece... But as soon as she opened her mouth I had to take my headphones off and adjust the volume.... :( I didnt understand nor did I connect with the value of the wailing, screeching, voice undulations and warbling coming out of her mouth. And she finished with this look of triumph on her face and everybody clapped like she was the cats ass.... And I wondered then if that was her REALLY performing...? Was THAT art? Performance art? How much was she even paid to be there? Or was that her being facetious? Mocking her audience because she is who she is? Or is that simply Yoko Ono? It seems that the former Canadian band Bare Naked Ladies had some interesting things to say about her.... I think about these shoes that were given to my 7 year old son Mason.... The high monetary value of the shoes was heavily stressed by the mum of the boy that handed them down to him... The monetary component was very important to her, I think because of the brand. But, it was interesting to note that they didnt last him more than a month because their quality was so poor. Not expressing ingratitude, simply observing that one simple moment and mentally contrasting the value of that product with the value of a moccasin or mukluk. I also think about the value of time within the framework of a father labouring for 16 hours a day in India contrasted with the value of of 1 hour of time of a CEO in one of the top Fortune 500 companies in North America. That father in India uses his body, strains his muscles, works his hands to the bone, probably barefoot, in the hot sun, all day for pennies. The CEO sits on his ass, spends time on the phone, in meetings, goes to breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings and uses his mouth and his mind for his work... And he is paid more in an hour for his value than that father in India will ever be paid over his entire history of labouring for his family... I think about brands... Brands of clothes, brands of cars, brands of insurance and brands of hand tools... Brands are occasionally related to quality, but seem more to be based on notoriety depending on whos face is representing the product. Branding and brand building are such ludicrous instruments geared mostly (it seems) for profit margin increases. And too, I think about how municipalities sell off entire cubic meters of their communities drinking water (which is 1,000 L or 219 imperial gallons) to fracking companies for less than the cost of a pack of cigarettes. I think about humans being viewed as resources or commodities... My thought process on this gets overwhelming.... And I think Ive come to a final conclusion..... Value is an extremely complex and subjective thing.... We need to determine as a human family and as a societal culture what is most important to us. What matters. And what has the most value to us. The Natural World/Nature? Conveniences? Merely surviving? Thriving? A Brand? A New World? Technology? A new hybridized model combining components from multiple schools of thought? Compassion & Technology? Individuality AND the Co-creation of Inclusive Communities? Nature & Technology & Symbiotic CoExistence? Im just thinking out loud here on value. Dont really know where Im going with this... Wondering what your thoughts are on the concept of value... And what matters to you?
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 15:44:35 +0000