[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?

[CMCDragonkai]

You can feel whatever you want to feel. That doesn't mean it translate to anything in reality.