In Support of Value
By FORREST ZENG ‘25
Disclaimer: The following OP-ED is an imitation of a Dialogue, a structure of writing commonly used by the Greek philosopher Plato. Anything said by people in the dialogue may not accurately reflect their true opinions.
Courtesy of Katelyn Cui
Two students are in the Bowld, packing up after orchestra practice.
Student 1: I was blessed to have been on time for practice. I was out of town for the entire day, and was almost late.
Student 2: If I may ask, where were you?
Student 1: I was attending an event hosted by the New Hampshire Junior Classical League. I must tell you though, apart from the gladiator fighting, chariot racing, and Certamen, I witnessed a curious conversation.
Student 2: Please be so kind as to tell.
Student 1: Well, it is the weekend, and the rest of the day is clear, so I might as well.
We were at the football field at the event while others fought in the distance with foam swords and shields for the gladiator combat event. I was reading a book, and I heard a conversation in the background. It went like this:
While sitting on the artificial turf, Jinmin and Forrest were discussing what sounded like South Korean politics, but I wasn’t quite sure. They quickly changed topics, however.
Jinmin turned to Cecily, who was sitting near them, reading a book. He said to her, “Cecily, I have been meaning to discuss with you your supposed abhorrence against philosophy. Why did you make this choice?”
Cecily was surprised. “I never really saw the purpose in studying philosophy. I don’t think life needs a higher meaning, so I don’t need philosophy to find it. I think people that study philosophy are quite intelligent, but they could be using their intelligence to simply live their lives, without having to think of a big, overarching, existentialist meaning for life.”
“That’s an interesting stance,” Forrest said. “Would you consider yourself a nihilist?”
“Well, in some ways, it makes sense. What is life worth if it ends? Of course, I don’t entirely believe that life has no value, but I think that life has no value beyond when it ends. Nothing really matters anymore after I pass, so I should live my life as it is now.”
“What do you think value is?”
“That’s pretty hard to define. But I guess it would be something that is important, an attribute assigned to an object or concept.”
“Can it be quantified?”
“Not with a number, no.”
“But value has different degrees?”
“Yes.”
“And value can change?”
“Of course.”
“Value is often synonymous with ‘importance.’”
“Yes. Value is how important something is.”
Forrest asked, “Can we define the value of some object without judging it with some other object?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, when we judge whether something is valuable or not, we always have a standard. A diamond ring is more valuable than a glass ring, because we have certain standards—and these standards are often motivated towards perpetuating or supporting another object or concept. In this case, we think diamond rings to be valuable because of the concept of ‘luxury,’ which we often hold as preferable to ‘poverty.’”
“I suppose so.”
“Then, we must agree, nothing has value in itself, but it must always be in how it influences something else, be it physical, or abstract.”
“Yes.”
“For example, in most situations, oxygen is more valuable than water is to life. We can’t say ‘oxygen is more valuable than water’ by itself. There are no standards. Instead, we must connect oxygen and water to ‘life’ and ‘death,’ and we say that ‘for life, oxygen is more valuable than water.’
Or even in a more abstract sense. You could say that the skill of writing is more valuable to being a historian than, say, the skill of being able to jet ski. But writing is not inherently more valuable than jet skiing. Just for being a historian, the former will bring you more success than the latter.”
“That makes sense,” Cecily said. “But where are you going with this?”
Forrest continued. “I really don’t know, I am simply asking you questions—but let’s now try and apply this value to the concept of life. Since we know that value must be judged with some external object, then this means that determining the value of life requires something similar.”
“It seems so.”
“What could that be?”
“I would consider it, as I said earlier, to just live your life to the ‘fullest.’ There really is no overarching existentialist goal for me—especially after I die.”
“So the value of your own life is gone after you are gone, since there is nothing to be valued?”
“That’s the stance I take,” Cecily responded.
“Then perhaps you would be so kind as to answer this question: is existence preferable to non-existence?”
Cecily seemed visibly confused. “Well, yes, of course.”
“Why?”
“I’m really not quite sure, Forrest.”
“Let’s consider it this way. Nobody here knows what ‘non-existence,’ which would be considered ‘death,’ actually is like. But we can consider it in three hypothetical possibilities: First, if the experience of non-existence is equal to existence, then the argument would be made that those in the plane of non-existence would stay there, and that we, in the plane of existence, would stay here, since transferring ourselves to the other side doesn’t change anything.”
“You speak of the dead.”
“This is only hypothetical, of course. Second, if the experience of non-existence is less preferable to existence, then the obvious choice is simply to remain existing.”
“Right.”
“And third, if the experience of non-existence is more preferable than it is to existence, then the choice would be to begin to not exist.”
“Yet how would you know if non-existence was more preferable, or less, or equal to existence?”
“Well, we don’t. Yet is it not true that in two of our three cases, thing’s do not end up better?”
“That makes sense.”
“It seems that we can also be fairly sure, biologically, that the third case, where non-existence is ‘better’ than existence, simply doesn’t exist.”
“Yes.”
“With this chain of reasoning, existence is preferable to non-existence.”
“I think many of us would agree.”
At this moment, Jinmin decided to jump in. “I was listening, and I must agree that this logic seems perfectly sound. Yet, I think, we have not yet applied this to the idea of value.”
Cecily added, “That is true, yes. We know now that we would rather live than die, but how does that change life? Isn’t the desire to live a biological impulse already?”
Jinmin asked, “If we prefer existence to non-existence, then how do we continue to exist?”
“I suppose by breathing and eating, and doing all those things that keep us alive.”
“That sounds right. Then surely these things are important to keeping us alive?”
“Yes.”
“Would you say that, if we prefer existence, then we should aim to exist as long as possible?”
“It seems so.”
“Because if we prefer something over the other holistically, then we will try and have the former over the latter as much as we can,” Jinmin continued. “By this logic, we have come upon the goal of life—that is, to continue living perpetually, and that we see the processes of sustaining life as valuable to existence, which we prefer.”
Cecily thought about it for a second, then asked, “That makes sense. Surely, then, we would try and be immortal. That is most valuable.”
Jinmin paused, thinking, before asking, “On the topic of immortality, would you consider immortality to be a state of being, or a process?
“Well, immortality is a state of being, I suppose, living until infinity.”
“And what about seeking existence—for example, working hard to sustain yourself and your family to prolong your existence?”
“Inherently, it must be a process. But what is the difference between seeking life and simply being immortal?”
Cecily asked, “What do you mean by seeking life?”
“Continuing to be alive, by drinking water, breathing, and eating.”
“That seems entirely biological. Surely, there is something more to life than that.”
“And there surely is—but in respect to existing or not existing, there is only that.”
“That makes sense. Continue.”
“Do you think that, if we are immortal, that we could imagine what ‘death’ or ‘non-existence’ is?”
“I guess not—and if someone did die, we would be quite confused.”
“In this sense, they wouldn’t understand why we prefer ‘existence’ over ‘non-existence,’ simply because they don’t understand what ‘non-existence’ means.”
“Yes.”
“Well then, if we were immortal, as a result, there wouldn’t be any value to life. We value living life because it is important in ensuring existence over non-existence. However, without the comparison between existence and non-existence, this essential standard for life is missing—and we wouldn’t value sustaining life anymore, as there is no end goal.”
“I see. And what makes this different from the process of sustaining life?”
“When we sustain life, we have an end-goal: existence. This makes sustaining life valuable.”
“I agree,” Cecily said.
At this point, we had to leave the football field to return back to the main campus for the evening presentations. Carrying foam spears and shields, we began to walk back. Cecily, Jinmin, and Forrest were a bit ahead of me, continuing their conversation. I couldn’t hear the first part, but as I got closer, I caught this:
“...no value beyond itself. We don’t really have a chance to try and pursue existence after we pass away, so I suppose the only value life has is during life,” Cecily said.
Forrest asked, “Is existence only in the form of being alive?”
“For me, it would be.”
“Would you consider George Washington to still exist?”
“No.”
“And yet somehow our capital is named after him, his likeness is on the billions of one dollar bills in the pockets of millions of people—his legacy is quite literally our country. In this sense, he lives in the minds of millions of people, students, politicians alike.”
“But how does this make life valuable beyond non-existence?”
“You are a historian on our Certamen team. Why do you study history?”
“Because I find it fun, and sometimes I think we can learn many things from history.”
“Such as what?”
“Well, for example, during the First Punic War, when the Romans were against the far superior Carthaginian navy, they were not afraid to imitate the Carthaginian ships, building a massive fleet in a very short amount of time. And in addition to that, they added a new innovation to the ship to tailor to their own strengths: a corvus, which was a huge lever attached to the front of the ship. The corvus would slam down onto the Carthaginian ships, creating a bridge between the two ships. The Roman soldiers on the ship, who were far more skilled at land battle, could turn a naval battle to their favor.”
“That is quite interesting. Do you think, thus, that the lessons of the past are important? We can certainly learn a lot from the story you just told.”
“Of course.”
“And so, the lives of the Romans, although they are all dead now, are incredibly valuable to us.”
“Yes.”
“So, perhaps the lives that we live will be valuable to historians in the future, who are trying to find ways to sustain their own lives.”
“It seems so.”
“In this way, although the value of sustaining our own lives is limited only to our own lifetime, there is an importance in sustaining our ideas, our legacy beyond our death, for the lives of people in the future.”
At this point, we had reached the main campus, so we broke off into the auditorium to watch the evening award ceremony.
Student 2: A curious conversation—and bits of wisdom I’m sure, that would be useful for future generations.
