| Yes, our human value decreases when our numbers increase. This has a biological foundation. However, before explaining the biological factor, I want to acknowledge the importance of full bellies to valuing humans, and the importance of concepts to valuing humans. We learn those concepts and values from our culture, and our cultures have improved since our bellies have been full. When bellies are empty most the time, their best survival move is to not value life too much, not one's own or anyone else's. So there are a few things that play into how much we value each other.
Those who organize themselves with kinship ties, will naturally value someone associated with them through kinship, more than those who are not united by kinship. Religious communities function much in the same way as tribes organized around kinship. Then we have professional groups and unions. Then we get into other areas of social status from being on the inside of Bush's circle to being a gang member. We divide between "us" and "them" and those who are one of "us" have more value to us than those who are one of "them". And so we come to "The Lonely Crowd", where we are so overwhelmed with humanity, and so disenfranchised, sharing no bonds or obligations with each other, that we begin to shut down and engage with each other less and more superfacially.
The is a biologically reason for this. Our brains consume a lot of energy. Intimate relationships consume a lot of energy. Saying hi to someone on the bike path, without really paying attention to this person, is low energy, and ignoring this person is even less energy. But, is it safe to ignore the stranger? Regardless of how safe we feel, we experience tension when we are physically close to another person, and we deal with this by turning people into objects. That is we start responding to people as extensions of machines, or completely ignore the people on an elevator. We might smile and exchanged the annoying "how are you" "fine thank you", with everyone knowing the question is not inviting you to engage in a personal relationship and unload your pains and sorrow. Something you may desparately need to do, but the extension of the machine must get on to the next customer and probablely doesn't want to actually listen to you and be there for you, anyway. We frantically work every day to maintain our sanity in a living situation that pushes beyond what our human systems we designed to do, and seriously fails to meet our human needs for intimacy.
Compare this to an African village where a mother's first child is given to the village. This first child is raised by everyone in the village, all adult females are the child's mothers and all adult males are the child's fathers. Mothers keep their second child, but that first one is used to bond everyone in the village. Bonded human beings are going to be far more important to each other, than humans struggling frantically to have their own time and space, undisturb by anyone else, just to maintain their sanity.
If we ever accept our biological limits and needs, we might organize ourselves for sanity, and reduce the social problems we have created by holding a totally unrealistic idea of what it means to be human. We are not created separate from the animal world, with no biological limits. We are not as much like God as religious people might like to believe, and then cursed with sin because of what a woman ate. We share much in common with the animals and have very real limits, and when we accept that, we might love ourselves a little more, be more tolerant and forgiving, and manifest a better reality for ourselves. |