To what extent is life on Earth equal?

[Her]

Take the question as you wish, though my one restriction is any discussion related to abortion. Really not interested in seeing anything about that.

 

[gimmepie]

I think that the answer to this is probably going to vary between people. The truth of the matter is, that from an unbiased standpoint, no life is inherently more valuable than any other in the grand scheme of things. However conscious living things, we as humans in particular, are bound to prescribe a value to other living things dependant on their and our circumstances.

To a cow, their life is more important than the life of the person who wants to take a bite out of their ass. To us one human is worth a million cows. Yet we're also perfectly happy to romanticise dolphins, or lions or gorillas.

Essentially, life has no value but the value we individually attribute to it.

 

[Somewhere_]

I believe every person has the same natural rights. I dont think anyone has a right that another has (in practice maybe). So basically universal rights. For example, if you believe one has a right to free healthcare, everyone has that right: socio-economic status does not affect your rights.

But at an individual point of view, value is subjective. I value my mom more than I value my classmate that I may talk to every once in a while. In this since, nothing is equal.

In terms of skills, Lebron James is more valuable as a basketball player than a hockey player. But if suddenly everyone stopped watching basketball, James's value would drop significantly. Unless everyone had the same skills and ability, no one can be equal like this.

 

[Esper]

Essentially, life has no value but the value we individually attribute to it.

For the purposes of this thread I'll agree with this statement. Equality is after all a value judgment.

But value is subjective. I once argued with a friend who said that the life of an American is worth more than the life of an impoverished person living in Sudan. His reason was that the poor person wasn't contributing and moreover a drain on resources and potentially a detriment to the world if their poverty pushed them to violence. I said that the same thing could happen to an American and then we reached the point where we were arguing about whether one's status, power, and wealth made you more valuable, but what I took from it was that inherently no person has more value because even if you have a certain value system the people you're 'rating' can change. If that poor person in Sudan went on to be the leader of a peace movement then that person's 'value' would change. And since we can't read someone's mind or see into the future we can't know for certain how 'valuable' someone is. The only fair thing to do is value everyone equally.

 

[jappo]

Sadly there is no such thing as equal value for lifes in this world. one of the examples that I think about is the fact that we (western people) have such a luxerious life because there are people having ****ty lives on the other side of the world. Im currently happy with my kinda cheap Smartphone, but its cheap because people who make it havea worse life than me.

But when I have the chance to buy a phone where the people making it get more salery, but where the phone is more expensive, I choose the samsung/sony over it. Cause "I am not gonna pay 200 more bucks for a worse phone".

Kinda weird to think about it, But im not that nice to the people outside of my own country :O​