[lumb63]

I’ve heard similar statements from other people, and I have a disconnect that prevents me from understanding. Why would someone want to detach their self worth from what they do? If someone ought not feel a negative emotion in response to doing something “bad”, by what logic can they justify feeling something positive in response to doing something “good”? I cannot conceive of a world view that allows one to feel proud of their accomplishments but does not require their disappointment in their shortcomings.

Furthermore, the idea of separating one’s self-worth from “what one does” does not make sense to me either. If someone’s worth is not tied to what they do, then the criminals, liars, frauds, cheaters, etc., of the world are every bit as valuable as our loved ones, idols, great contributors, etc. That view doesn’t make any sense to me; I wouldn’t be disappointed one ounce if all the criminals on the Earth vanished tomorrow, but I would be greatly disappointed if all my friends disappeared. The only difference between those people is “what they do/have done”.

[akhosravian]

There’s a few things I see in your post.

One is an implied notion of objective rankings of worth of humans, and binary labels for people. Your post explicitly categorized “all criminals” and “all my friends” at disjoint sets. I can’t speak for your friends, but many of mine are “criminals” in the sense of disregard for drug laws. If you’re willing to sweep minor traffic violations under the heading “criminal” you’d probably sweep up most individuals with drivers licenses. Is the hypothetical person stealing so they (or their children) can eat irredeemable to you? There are certainly folks who on net do more harm than good, but rare are the people who truly only do bad to the world.

Second is a matter of perspective. If your friend started a new thing today, say learning the piano if they’ve never played an instrument, would you expect them to be good? If not, would you think less of them for trying? What if they’ve been playing for years, and one time when playing a song they’ve practiced many times they miss a few keys? Now replace the friend with yourself. Does your feelings about any of these change?

It’s not uncommon (especially in programmer types) to allow others more grace than we allow ourselves. You can be disappointed by your failures, and thrilled by your successes without impacting your sense of self worth.

[lumb63]

I don’t think there is an objective ranking of worths of humans. What is valuable is inherently subjective. Everyone has a different value system. However, I believe there is a large amount of overlap, especially in the extremes. Most people find murder and rape deplorable, for instance. That is the group I was referring to when I said “criminals”. Personally, I believe members of that group to be below valueless, i.e., I would benefit from their not existing. Others can draw their lines differently, but I suspect most people have some similar group.

Looking at your piano examples, if I had a friend who took up piano, I would admire that, because I value learning. I wouldn’t expect them to be good, and I would not think any less of them, because it is the gumption to try something new and to learn a new skill that I find value in, not playing the piano. If they had been playing piano for years and made mistakes, I would not think any less of them, because I don’t value the ability to play the piano. Presumably, after many years of practice, playing the piano would hold a lot of value to them (or it held value to them so they practiced; the point still stands) and so it would make a lot of sense to me that they would feel worse when they made mistakes; those mistakes demonstrate to them that they have less of something that they value.

Like I said, we all have different value systems, but our self-worths should be tied to how well we live our values, i.e., our integrity. If our self-worth is not tied to how well we represent our values, then it is, IMO, baseless.

[nebulousthree]

They are advocating for self-worth to be intrinsic to oneself. The reason for this is the acknowledgement of at least 2 things: that every human is a victim of their starting circumstances, and the potential in every human being to alter their course in life. All the criminals you would be content to see disappear still were victims of the circumstances that led them there, and they all had potential to alter their course in life. You never know what stimulus life will offer you that can change everything for you. From a more utilitarian view, even criminals can possess very valuable skills that can be directed to constructive uses.

[than3]

> Personally I believe members of that group to be below valueless.

Well, this seems like an extreme attitude that doesn't account for a large swath of how the world actually works, and is often gotten to that point by personal bias and not questioning beliefs constructively.

Its flawed because its an overgeneralization.

To provide an example, are there people that have been wrongfully convicted. Have any of those people been put to death as a result of those convictions. Assume for a second that you are one of those persons, and 12 people based upon some judge or skewed evidence chose that. Are you valueless? Who chose that you would be convicted? Wrong place at the wrong time?

There's a movie with Russel Crowe called The Next Three Days. It covers this type of premise. We never have absolute information, we have interpretations which are just as malleable as a game of telephone.

As for your ideas on value systems and integrity and self-worth, there are contradictions and its a bit convoluted. It fails to make distinctions between things within and outside your control, and the ever present ability of others to deceive sometimes even without their knowledge.

[recursivequine]

You’ve missed the point, but also helped support their point. The comment was about criminals that rape and murder - as in people that perform those actions.

Whether society accurately captures and properly deals with those people is an entirely different subject. The fact society even has to do so is a net negative

[adave]

What you say makes sense but misses a critical point i.e of self compassion. Looking at the piano example, if they are kind to themselves and based on the amount of compassion they have, a failure of screwing up a few keys might be nothing, missing a piece from a song might be a bad day and screwing up a live orchestra may be a learning experience. To another unkind to self piano play one or all of these are catastrophes and a hit to ones self esteem. Both of these folks are experienced piano players but the former is able to disconnect and review their mistakes without placing a judgement on self(i.e. being a harsh parent to self.)

Depending on how harshly one judges oneself is the reason for not handling criticism to ones failings. No one is perfect so one better be kind and try to learn from their mistakes and not take it on their ego.

[mnsc]

Two questions. Can a slacker goodfornothing McDonald's-working college dropout that only live day to day, party to party, feel self-worth or should they feel worthless? Can I as a senior software developer base my selfworth on the same value system as that college dropout even though I finished college? Aka if I made an honest mistake in my pr, I wouldn't have to feel bad and decrease my selfworth even though I think I could have written better code.

[mattkrause]

> Can a slacker goodfornothing McDonald's-working college dropout that only live day to day, party to party, feel self-worth?

Do they throw good parties?

Do they help their friends celebrate their successes and provide succor in times of need? If so, why shouldn't they feel some self-worth?

[mnsc]

Average parties, ok friend.

[tinideiznaimnou]

>Can a slacker goodfornothing McDonald's-working college dropout that only live day to day, party to party, feel self-worth or should they feel worthless?

The person you posited has more self-worth, by definition, than the self-doubting programmers in this thread. Precisely because they are getting by while doing something much less "meaningful" or "useful" (as evaluated by others) than a job in software engineering.

(Of course, I'm talking about the hypothetical person I imagined when I read your post; most such people that I've met in real life actually feel pretty bad about themselves, party to numb the pain, or because they have nothing better to do, and actually feel worse after they've had their "fun", et cetera. But let's roll with your scenario for a second, I think you're on to something important.)

Maybe this person doesn't have to suck up to a pointy-haired boss, or doesn't have to mentally model arcane concepts that are subject to planned obsolescence anyway, or doesn't participate in the violation of people's minds facilitated by the infotech industry.

Or maybe they still do the aforementioned things but on their own terms. Maybe they code for fun and write malware when hungover out of pure malice. Or they don't. Maybe they're a hooker on smack and just shat on your floor. It does not matter. What does matter is that this hypothetical person does not have the experiences that make you ascribe "negative" or "insufficient" self-worth to yourself.

In other words:

* You can be an absolutely awful horrible piece of shit person by anyone else's (or everyone else's) standards and still have a feeling of self-worth. This is by definition: self-worth is the worth that you ascribe to yourself. No matter how much you care (or not - it's a choice) about other people, self-worth is self-worth; worth to "civilized society", "a value system" or "an individual other" is not self-worth, by definition.

* On the other hand, the "need" to experience something that others call "self-worth" does not in fact originate from the self, but is a vague obligation imposed onto you by others: the obligation to have some sort of nebulous experience that others call "a feeling of self-worth".

* There is no such thing as "should feel worthless": nobody gets to tell anyone else how to feel. Imposing an obligation on someone to experience an emotional state is, technically, a violation of bodily integrity. Yeah I said it. Whatever real, physical neurochemical process lies behind the experience related to the concept of "self-worth", is a normal part of the body's homeostasis, serving to ensure the self-preservation of an animal that is able to kill itself for entirely abstract reasons (such as awareness of own mortality, and downhill from there).

In even fewer words: in my book, someone who is an "ok friend" and throws "average parties", is defined as "a waste of my time". But they still get to live on the same planet and breathe the same air as me with my silly book. I don't get to decide their self-worth for them, and nobody, and nothing, gets to decide that for you, either.

Therefore: you can feel perfectly good about your successes and failures without even entertaining the notion of there being a concept of "self-worth". According to nobody in particular, this is actually preferable, for Occam's razor reasons if nothing else.

In theory, you can be a very "successful" person and still feel worthless; in practice, the feeling of worthlessness usually prevents one from becoming "successful", and makes it look as if it's the other way around.

Ultimately, the matter can be put like this: do you see yourself as goods to be bought and sold? If yes, then go ahead and demonstrate your high "feeling of self-worth" as much as you have to. If no, then why even bother with pricing yourself?

[Nihilartikel]

The pro tip is to attach your self worth not to your skill, but to it's first derivative!

That way any criticism that helps you improve your game, no matter how unpleasantly delivered, is a power up.

I say it glibly, like it's easy, but it works if one can internalize it.

[aplusbi]

I do like this (and the way you phrased it!) but I do think it has a dark side - there will come a time in your life where your skills plateau, and another time in your life where your skills start to decrease. Actually both of these will probably happen many times in your life!

It's important to recognize the ebb and flow and to be kind to yourself.

[programmer_dude]

Hmm, thanks for putting into words something I have been doing unknowingly my entire life.

[adefa]

This is such an insightful comment. Thanks!

[molly0]

This was an interesting point of view.

[sixo]

To give a slightly different answer than other commenters:

To detach emotions from work without throwing out the value of good work: attach your self-worth to something UPSTREAM "doing good work", a cause of good work, and not the work itself. You do this by realizing that the emotional attachment to your own work was never really about the work, it was what the work implied about you; the emotional brain jumps to conclusions. Good work, when you zoom in as if with a better telescope, that you are responsible, capable, well-intentioned, generous, intelligent. These can be ends in themselves—you'll disappoint yourself when you fail to live up to them, for their own sake. Those are better ends—they let you say "I DID address everything I could think of but I missed something, I'd better learn from that", rather than feeling something you missed as a vague attack against your whole being. And because, you often try to prove we are all those things—fearing you're not—but fool ourselves with things that don't really prove it—like material wealth, or attention, or good grades. And then even if you succeed you are left with some guilt: "I got the good grades but I feel like I could have done something more important..."

You can take it further: those attributes, when you zoom in further, resolve further, into a feeling that you are worthy of existing, and worthy of love. In my experience (I have felt this, but I haven't learned to live like it), feeling "worthy of love" gives you permission TO love, to be good—which again you can invert. It's the right reason to be responsible, capable, etc—all of those flow outward from something deeper rather than being ends in themselves.

[dasil003]

I think these platitudes are just mental hacks people use to manage their emotions. Emotional responses are valuable information, but only up to a point. If you dwell on emotions and allow them to become the basis of narratives about yourself then you are becoming disconnected from reality. This applies to both good and bad things, you never want to get too high or too low. Ultimately what matters is your character and how you operate. If you put in the work, you’ll tend to get better outcomes, but nothing can insulate you from mistakes. Being able to learn from mistakes and be your best requires that you don’t let your sense of self-worth be tied to fragile narratives or heavy self-defense mechanisms that deny reality.

[lazide]

Is your intrinsic value as a person due to what someone else thinks of the quality of your work? If so, that is inherently dangerous and fragile. That is what is being warned against.

Sometimes people are having a bad day. Sometimes someone has a different view of 'good' than you. Sometimes someone just got served divorce papers that morning out of the blue. And none of that you can control, or even do much to influence many times.

However, being aware that having others value the output you produce gives you things that benefit you - like help pay the rent - in combination with other factors, and is therefore important to you. But it's different.

Looking at your work and being able to judge yourself if you did a good job, is healthier, and more productive. If you're seeing that others judge the value of it differently, it's worth investigating why.

There may be something you're missing (different values, or they don't like your face, or they hate the language it's in or the style, or they haven't been laid in years, whatever).

If it is something you can adjust, it may be worth doing so. If not (or not worth it), it may be worth finding somewhere else with different values. It may also be worth adjusting your judgement of your work based on those factors, IF you think they're valid and it will improve things in your favor. Sometimes, it's worth just writing off the feedback or defending yourself, because it's coming from a toxic place from them.

But if you do this, they won't be personal attacks, because it isn't about you (as in who you actually are), because they can't know the truth there anyway. People don't work that way.

It will be about their perception of the value of what you produce to them, or their perception of you. Which is not up to you (directly), but you can influence it, and often has little to do with who you actually are and more to do with specific things you can concretely do a bit differently and change.

Does that help?

[kazinator]

> Is your intrinsic value as a person due to what someone else thinks of the quality of your work?

Absolutely, but:

1) not all of that value, just the value as someone who does that work. I mean, it would be crazy to think that you have no value as a dad to your three-year-old because you made some crap code design.

2) not for all possible values of "someone else". Just those someone else who have a clue about the work, and make specific, objective criticisms that are verifiably true, and who understand the context of the work: what are its requirements and non-requirements, including constraints.

3) I don't necessarily want someone else to think everything I make is of high quality; however, the right somebodies should more or less agree with me about the quality. If I make something and think it is of medium quality (for some justifiable economic reasons), then if someone thinks it is of great quality, I will regard him as a fool; but if someone thinks it is of garbage quality, I will wonder whether I might not be a fool. Ideally, we should be of one mind with everyone who understands the problem and the work. If the work is mediocre, everyone (including the author) should find it so based on some objective criteria. Everyone who understands the economic reasons for why it was made mediocre should ideally agree with that also. "Ah, I see; I would have done it the same with regard to that purpose and those requirements."

[lazide]

The challenge I think is rational analysis != emotional reality many (often most) times. And many times emotional reality is due to some physical element we’re just not noticing (didn’t eat lunch, or haven’t stretched in years, or whatever).

It’s easy to say ‘no, my value as a person is not due to if someone likes my work’, but emotionally we can still be in that place for many hard to address reasons.

And under stress (which we almost all are), balancing out all this to come up with ‘good enough’ and managing all the stakeholders understanding of ‘good enough’ to come to a successful outcome can be really hard and even more stressful.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if rationally someone understands, but they are still reacting that way, there is almost certainly a real reason, it just isn’t one they are able to see right now.

So maybe some yoga/excercise, or some meditation, or going outside for awhile and touching grass can help too.

Us engineer types tend to ignore emotional and physical health sometimes, especially when there is something scary or exciting going on. And we have a ton of that right now.

[magicalhippo]

> I cannot conceive of a world view that allows one to feel proud of their accomplishments but does not require their disappointment in their shortcomings.

For me there's a big difference between being disappointed in what I've done and feeling bad for what I've done.

If I write some shitty code, which I still do after 30 years of programming, and my colleague points it out, I feel disappointed. But I don't feel bad. I fix it, try to learn from it and move on.

[kazinator]

When I write shitty code, there is nothing to learn any more. I already know it's shitty and would have called it out if someone else wrote it. If that still happens by now, there is nothing that can be done; that's why we have that review process, thank you. Alone you and I will write shitty code and merge it into the trunk. With mutual cross-checking, far less so. That's the main content of the learning.

[antihero]

> Why would someone want to detach their self worth from what they do

What you are doing is a higher goal than a PR, and detaching yourself from the minor details allows you to achieve this with greater flexibility and skill in the long term.

You have to take steps back and see subsequent bigger pictures and see what you’re doing within the context of a product, a job, a pattern of self-improvement, a fulfilling life.

[godshatter]

There's a difference between taking criticism of a section of code to be indicative of some kind of moral failing, and taking that criticism to mean that their understanding of that piece of code was not complete. The first is a direct hit to self worth, the second is a hit to one thing that is used to determine self worth along with lots of other things. The first way is taking it as some kind of attack, the second way is taking it as a learning experience and a chance to increase self-worth by becoming a better developer.

So I think what people mean when they suggest detaching their self worth from their code is that they shouldn't take criticism of their code as a personal attack but as a chance to learn and grow. Hence "you are not your code": the attack isn't a direct assault on you, it's a technical argument about the actual code itself.

[hosh]

Intrinsic motivation starts pulling someone into a whole person, whereas someone entirely reliant on extrinsic motivation does not really know who they are.

Take criminal behavior as an example. Someone reliant mainly on extrinsic motivation are also the same people who will not know what the right thing is when no one is looking — or worse, they are bad actors when no one is looking. Being intrinsically motivated for moral behavior requires you to really examine what is right or wrong.

This includes self-worth. I don’t think most people who are mostly extrinsically motivated realize the extent of social engineering and conditioning used so that society benefits the wealthy few .

[lwhi]

Fundamentally, because we are still worth something even when our achievements are completely removed.

If you take the view that our achievements are necessarily integral to our self worth this logically isn't true.

[robertlagrant]

But this isn't the point. The previous commenter was replying to someone who said that what we do has zero to do with our self worth. They were saying, no, it does have quite a lot to do with it.

Saying "well it's not all about what we do!" is not in keeping with the conversation.

[layer8]

> we are still worth something even when our achievements are completely removed.

You can’t logically derive this from anything. It’s just a choice of how to see the world. “Worth” is inherently a subjective value judgement.

[mynameisvlad]

Who ever said it has to be logically derived?

Most of what we do and how we think is not “logically derived” and is extremely subjective; we’re human, not Vulcan.

[layer8]

The GP claimed that "this logically isn't true", implying that the question is one of logical reasoning.

[Viliam1234]

> I cannot conceive of a world view that allows one to feel proud of their accomplishments but does not require their disappointment in their shortcomings.

That is a great point... but the answer is that you should also take your accomplishments with a grain of salt.

Basically, yes, your outcomes are a function of your inputs (talent, work, etc.), but it is a very noisy function and people usually underestimate that part. Sometimes you do the right thing and fail anyway, in the sense that "the right thing" is a strategy that succeeds with probability 95%, but today just happened to be that remaining 5%. And if the next day you apply the same strategy to another task and succeed, it doesn't mean that you have improved.

If you want to base your self worth on your outcomes, at least choose the long-term trends over the short-term noise. If you usually do a good work, then the bug you made yesterday should be interpreted as an accident, rather than you being bad at what you do. And vice versa, the successfully completed project is a combination of your skills plus the good luck of not having one of those accidents today; both of them were necessary together.

> If someone’s worth is not tied to what they do, then the criminals, liars, frauds, cheaters, etc., of the world are every bit as valuable as our loved ones, idols, great contributors, etc.

Let's not judge moral character the same way we judge talent. To be a great contributor is a combination of character and talent. To be a criminal is a failure of character, but there are both talented and talentless criminals.

[solarmist]

The distance allows risks.

If failing at a project means your a failure then you’re too close.

Failure and mistakes are how you learn.

If failure and criticism are about you then you will always be defensive about and flaws, perceived or real.

So yes be proud or disappointed, but have the distance and self confidence to believe it is expected and normal to make mistakes/fail at things on the path.

As the other commenter said care about the trends and 1st derivative not the individual data points.

[kazinator]

I think you should attach your self-worth to your design; but not to some minor mistakes in implementation. Not your entire self-worth, just that of it which has to do with being a designer.

A great novelist would be foolish to let some editor's remarks about spelling errors and run-on commas destroy their self-worth as a writer.

If a knowledgeable critic points out problems like the plot being a series of unoriginal tropes, and the characters being paper-thin stereotypes, that has to strike at the author's self-worth as a writer. I don't see how you can get around that.

[naasking]

> The only difference between those people is “what they do/have done”.

This is a very consequentialist framing of values. There are other ways of conceptualizing values, like virtue ethics and deontology, so if you're actually interested in understanding a different modality, those are keywords you can Google.

[dclowd9901]

Because your self worth shouldn’t be tied to how successful you are, but how willing you are to learn and grow. Nobody’s perfect nor can they be, so it’s a bad target. But everyone can be better.

[dougb5]

It's even totally reasonable not to tie your self-worth to anything related to growth or learning or improvement or whatever. Plenty of people feel high self-worth by simply loving the people around them.

[seedie]

There is another, way more important, difference. You know your friends for who they are. You know the criminals only for what they do.

[lazide]

It's very dangerous to not also take into account what your friends do (or who the criminals are).

Words and emotions are easy to fake, deeds are much harder.

[iambateman]

Even if your philosophical foundation is not western liberalism (which is derived from Christianity), you can appreciate that many western people view all people as having inherent dignity…

Being a person gives you value which cannot be take away.

It’s a philosophy, so one may reject it, but a lot of people separate their personness from their work because of the idea that each person is valuable in their own right.

[zach_miller]

> Why would someone want to detach their self worth from what they do?

If you derive self worth from results, then you could be disappointed by circumstances outside of your control.

Suppose you set a goal to make $1 million by age 30. At age 27 you're doing great and (through no fault of your own) you are struck by lightning. Because we're playing pretend let's just say your insurance doesn't cover lightning strikes and so medical bills drain a lot of your savings and you cannot continue your career and you do not become a millionare by 30.

If your goal is just the million, then you are a failure. You did not make it. If instead you derive self worth from your values, then you can still be a hard worker (or maybe your value is being self-starting, or entrepreneurial, or something else), even if you are struck by lightning.

> If someone ought not feel a negative emotion in response to doing something “bad”, by what logic can they justify feeling something positive in response to doing something “good”?

I think this section is pretty close to what I'm advocating here. "Good" and "bad" are doing a lot of legwork. What is good and what is bad? I'd wager if you asked people of different religions or ideologies or backgrounds you'd get a whole swath of answers here.

> I cannot conceive of a world view that allows one to feel proud of their accomplishments but does not require their disappointment in their shortcomings.

You might find that you attribute too much to yourself here. It can feel good when you are succeeding and sometimes the system at large is a major contributor to your accomplishments and your shortcomings. As an extreme example, I don't think that someone accomplishing little and suffering under Apartheid is worth less than someone benefiting from that system that accomplishes a lot.

> If someone’s worth is not tied to what they do, then the criminals, liars, frauds, cheaters, etc., of the world are every bit as valuable as our loved ones, idols, great contributors, etc.

To me it would depend why they commit crimes, why they lie, cheat, etc. Someone is stealing bread to feed their family that is very different from someone stealing taxes for a public project. Going back to the Apartheid example, an interracial couple would be breaking the law, and although they are criminals I would not want them to disappear for that. They could have even done horrible things to protest Apartheid and I would still not want them to disappear. If they had rotten values then sure.

[tinideiznaimnou]

>I cannot conceive of a world view that allows one to feel proud of their accomplishments but does not require their disappointment in their shortcomings.

First one's free: your accomplishments contribute towards your own well-being; your shortcomings are towards everyone else's disappointment. If you feel that your failures have disappointed others, you don't actually need to disappoint one more person (yourself) before you are allowed to do better. In practice, experiencing that emotional state is usually counterproductive (unless your goal is to make the others feel sorry for you). Just become aware of the failure and start looking for actionable root causes; no beating yourself up necessary.

You know, you did not even choose to be here in the first place: this world brought you forth into itself, by way of your ancestry, and imprinted its ways into the clean slate of your nervous system, by way of your formative experiences. "Perception of self" is just one of those imprints; "selfhood" is simply learned behavior.

(Even though it's next to impossible not to learn some form of selfhood, is it surprising in the slightest to say that different people's demonstrated perceptions of self can vary considerably?)

While "success" and "failure" are eminently useful notions for categorizing perceptions of feedback from the outside world, the only thing that makes these notions have any bearing at all on your perception of self is... force of habit. You have the option, and the moral right, to unlearn that habit. Nobody even asked you whether you want to be a "self"! You did not even exist when that choice was made! So, why feel responsible for whether you end up perceiving yourself as a "good enough" self? Don't you already have enough things to be responsible about, that are not entirely in your head through no fault of your own?

Expecting people to have internally consistent worldviews, or even an objective and logical perception of their own selves, is very, very idealistic. In my experience, people who are disappointed in themselves actually learned that from their parents and peers (and, increasingly, media) during the early years of their lives; it's this attitude of self-deprecation which sets them up to fail and guides them into a vicious cycle. While people who somehow avoided being taught this mentality in the first place, tend to be more resilient, not afraid to try, fail, then learn from failure and try again.

(Most people who don't kill themselves kinda-sorta end up unlearning self-deprecation and learning how to bounce back even from tremendous self-violations; but you have limited neuroplasticity, limited access to experiences, and limited time on this planet, so the sooner you start, the better. Don't wait until you can only learn internal resilience at the Pyrrhic cost of becoming an incorrigible narcissist, they're making too many of those already!)

>Furthermore, the idea of separating one’s self-worth from “what one does” does not make sense to me either. If someone’s worth is not tied to what they do, then the criminals, liars, frauds, cheaters, etc., of the world are every bit as valuable as our loved ones, idols, great contributors, etc.

You are confusing "their self-worth" with "their worth to you". Now, how could you? I think this is a really horrible, egregious, evil mistake for someone to casually make in the span of a couple sentences; I honestly can't fucking even. YET... you are still valuable to me, since you are the reason I am writing this message, you might even be receptive to my worldview, and I definitely do give a damn whether you get my point! No more, no less.

(Of course, for some reason people feel their self-worth diminished when someone points out what's basically a "syntax error" in their thinking. I think they teach 'em that in school through Pavlovian conditioning or something.)

You know, even horrible people are valuable to someone! Besides, it takes a great deal of self-worth to be a successful criminal, or even a petty liar! Especially because things can get overwhelmingly complicated really quickly, and advanced opponents can smell you doubting yourself. Narcissistic character is another case where one's self-worth and one's worth to others are grossly mismatched, to comic and often tragic effect.

What I would advise you to do (and yes, I am crazy, but I am not fucking with you), is to try listening attentively to some gangsta rap and try to put yourself in the shoes of... no, not an impoverished, radicalized African American youth; but of a well-to-do entertainer who successfully confuses the audience into believing that they are an impoverished, radicalized African American youth. And has the sheer audacity to accept more money for their controversial burlesque act, than you'll ever see for all your real hard work, that has actual, objective value for others, that everyone agrees on!

It's truly the eye-opening experience.