Worth and value are not the same

“…when you go to the polls, remember, all the you’s Donald Trump turned out to be for. And if it turns out you are not one of them…”

John Stewart on ‘The Daily Show’ regarding the upcoming election (Oct. 26, 2006)

‘Othering’ does not recognise personhood. I have spent some time on that topic in the past because I have seen how profoundly the ideology of ‘us and them’ can impact a group. As soon as we have declared that a person or a group is not like us and we create a new narrative for them, even if it is only slightly coloured with truth, we have made them the ‘other’. In short order, they can lose personhood in our eyes.

I often relate this to how churches operate, considering so much of the religious language of the church is based in the concept of a new community. A new family, a new gathering, representing a new way of thinking within the world around them. And there you have it, just like that, I used the word ‘them’. We are different, we are right, we are better…you get the picture. ‘They’ are the ones that do not belong and need to change to be part of ‘us’. As you see by the quote above it pervades everything in our society as we seek to win others over with an ideology or even a brand. The competitive language changes the values of all involved.

I recently watched a good Ted Talk on the subject of belonging which touches on the basics of why othering is both painful and destructive to all involved. Reut Schwartz-Hebron talks about the idea of belonging being a kind of intrinsic need, but it should not require anything of us when it happens naturally. We just belong because we are, and we learn the traits of remaining in the group. She goes on to talk about path of self-actualization that is a healthy way of distinguishing personal self regardless of the group. You can watch the whole video here:

Belonging without owing anyone an admission price is what we all desire. This is worth. We might feel valued by being accepted, but the worth of being does not carry a price tag. This distinction is found in what we might call ‘self-actualization’ according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which follows after ‘esteem’. The declaration of being a whole person, operating with agency and a sense of self. This of course is a voice of modernism because we know that the complete self is always present within the community. The stoic individual may be an ideal to some, but it is not a reality in our various groups. Family, society, school, church…we self identify while also being a part of.

This is why ‘othering’ is such a painful ordeal. It minimizes all the individuals within the group as they seek to make the other not only change, but ultimately be removed. When we watch the current political scenes around us, it is hard to separate from the self because all our social systems are wrapped up together. Social media creates an environment where we easily become the ‘other’ if we are not instantly approving of whatever thought is being expressed, and this happens repeatedly within circles we did not even know we were a part of. They just appeared on our screen and required a response. Now.

If we seek to belong because it is an innate need, the immediate requirements of expressing our belonging become a payment. Our endorsement is then a commodity. The more detached we are to all these things that require our endorsement, these varied circles, the less our identity is held as an autonomous person. We pay to belong and lose sight of self in the process.

An example from the above video: Laughing at something you don’t think is funny because everyone in your group laughs. So, you laugh the way everyone else laughs. This has been a lifelong struggle for me as a people-pleaser.

This is part of a larger conversation on being a safe space. You can read my post on that here: Are you a safe place?

So, what happens when we lose sight of self in order to pay the price to belong? We become the object. We normally think of objectification in sexual terms, and rightly so. But there is something to the fact of our making or becoming the object within social order. Again, the current political environment creates a number of scenarios where people become objectified. Individuals who buy into high-cost ideologies risk a lot to belong, and a large part of their value is in being endorsements of certain characters in the group.

In the past we would refer to being “just a cog in the machine.” That’s it.

When your value is held only in what you give to the others for the sake of their cause, worth is diminished. We easily take that next step of trying to earn the value placed on doing what is needed to feel part of the community. Belonging then has a price. This is not to be confused with humility, where we allow the other to be part of our space as part of a welcoming community. This is a price to be paid at the expense of self.

We all struggle with this at some level. Parents, we struggle to allow our children to become mature adults without our input. Church, we struggle to allow difference and disagreement for the sake of all to be a healthy part of the whole. Pick your circle, your place of community, and you will easily find examples of how we struggle to not ‘other’ the other for the sake of a simple ideal. If we switch the price tags in community, we change how we both give and take. We value what the person brings, but we desire each person to feel worth.

Consider how you interchange those 2 words in your own life. Do you have worth and value on par? Or do they need to be separated?