Value is inherently subjective. Just as the song suggests, the “why” of life is a “lesson learned in time,” a lesson that is differentiated among the unique experiences that each person goes through. If for some reason, I could work against the message of the song, in letting “time grab me by the hand” and directing me “where to go,” then I would attempt to experience mostly the things which I desire to know most about, so that one day I may speak truthfully to them in my own subjective way. That is experienced meaning, and here’s why:
The first “possession” is a bit cliche, however it has a greater meaning to me and in the wider scope of humanity. I would like, one day, to be obscenely wealthy and have a nearly unlimited amount of money. I would be lying if I said this desire wasn’t partly out of a want to buy lots of extravagant items and have an vast amount of political power in the post Citizens United world. However, the true personal value of unlimited capital is in the transcendence of material objects and basic necessities. If all of my basic needs were guaranteed to be met in surplus, if I were to never have to worry about money. Additionally, if I always had the ability to buy the bigger, and the better and the shinier, I would hope to experience a sort of transcendence over material object. It is not necessarily the money that is important, but the experience I hope to have. I hope to one day be able to feel like I can be totally committed to something other than meeting instinctual and other various needs below that of transcendence on Maslow’s pyramid. Exorbitant riches is just a means with considerable other perks that meet other needs as well. The idea actually came from a man who was the opposite of a billionaire. In an essay entitled “On Dumpster Diving,” by Lars Eighner, after being poor so long and finding strictly instrumental, temporary use of material goods for so long, Eighner writes that he comes to a moment in which he truly realized the impermanence and insignificance of tangible objects. It was a feeling he remarked he shared only with the wealthy, of the total “transience of material being” that highlights the relative significance of ideals. In regards to an importance to humanity, I believe the value stems from a similar idea. The progression of humanity as a whole has come from the expansion of our minds and efforts beyond that of basic necessity. From an anthropological standpoint, humanity began to invent, write, speak and form coherent ideas only when agriculture made it possible to have a surplus in food, so that humans could spend their time and energy doing things other than fending for basic necessity. However possible this was without achieving innumerable riches, the concept of totally breaking free from material and necessary goods and objects is intriguing and only known, in my view, through experience.
When thinking about the significance of experience, I often recall my favorite scene in Good Will Hunting, when Dr. Maguire reams Will out for debasing his wife on the grounds of Will’s lack of worldly experience. He castigates Will’s presumptuousness about his life and claims it unfounded, remarking that although he could probably tell him everything there is to have read about war, and Michaelangelo and love, he has never truly experienced any of those things. This is one of my favorite scenes because I have a strong belief that knowledge is legitimized to a great extent through experience, although not always possible as we cannot experience everything there is to experience. An area of study I particularly value is government, and I think that to be able to speak to it one day in my old age with satisfaction of my knowledge of it, I would like to have experienced being part of it. Again, with the caveat of inherent human selfishness, I can’t say that his desire doesn’t entirely come out of a need or want for power. However, I don’t think it’s importance should be diminished because of it. There can be dual satisfaction to my participation in government, as the value I am here attributing to it, is solely that of experience and learning. For me, it would fulfill a personal desire to learn through experience and know firsthand what the impact of the decision making process and public policy from a perspective foreign to those outside of the process. A distinctly human value of learning through experience, especially through the realm of government, is informative and life-fulfilling. If we could learn all that life had to offer from a book or from some uploaded link, or any other way that didn’t involve living life, I personally wouldn’t see any point in living. In many ways, we live to learn, not just to have the time to learn from a second hand perspective, but to serve the function of the primary receptor of information and subjectively process the world around us to understand it better in our own way.
Another experience which fits under the experience based learning umbrella of the previous example, is perhaps a contradictory example. I want in many ways to experience war. Much of what I hope to accomplish in life, is derived from the dedication to a human ideal which I believe strongly in, which my dedication to is strongly urged on by the “last full measure of devotion” given towards it by soldiers of our history. While one may look upon this as a naive, romanticism of patriotic values and war, I do not believe war is productive, nor is it the right of any human to impose force on another unless out of utter necessity. That line of necessity is certainly a point of contention, however, my ideas on war as a whole are wholly unformed in my opinion based on the fact that I have never been to a war. Not that any part of me wants to experience the hell of war, however the epistemologically curious side of my mind drives me to desire to experience that which I desire to speak knowledgeably on, for that is a point of ultimate personal satisfaction and value. Perhaps this is a naive sentiment, and contradictory no doubt considering that no rational part of my psyche would willingly place itself in the throngs of battle for merely the interest. What would motivate one to, for lack of a better term than that of Full Metal Jacket, to put oneself “in a world of (expletive)?” Another question which I believe could only be found through application. I believe the human value in the experience of war would be to despise it. Although I am speaking from what I would consider a perspective of epistemological insufficiency, I don’t believe that it would be too baseless to say that war is undesirable if at all avoidable. If all of humanity who hasn’t been to war knew its true personal costs, than war would disappear off the face of the Earth, I think that would be a good thing.
An experience I would like to have before I die is best described as the Walden experience. True I am ripping off Thoreau’s idea, however I value nature as an integral and often forgotten part of my life and the lives of all of humanity. Perhaps it is just an aesthetic appreciation or actually an enlightening distance from society that could be gained from spending a significant amount of time drinking in the magic of the natural world, however it is something I could not speak to with any certainty until doing it. Although hopelessly cliche, I do think the inherent connection humanity has with nature is undervalued, and we could all gain some amount of appreciation for the visceral beauty and value of the world around us just as it was before technology and as it continues to be in many places.
A final experience I would like to have, is to write a memoir. I believe this would be an experience of ultimate self understanding. Not just a memoir, but a manifesto of understanding of Nate Gallant. To be able to go through the channels and previous experiences of my life with retrospect and track the events and perceptions that have formed the body and mind writing the memoir, would be the ultimate feat of self awareness and metacognition. It would be the ultimate form of self satisfaction and fulfillment to be able to have a total sense of awareness of my life, tangibly and idealistically, and where it has originated. It would be of the ultimate reflective value, and I think a way of nostalgically creating a meaning for myself through a recognizable relation to the world around me. From a sense of importance to humanity, I think a sense of ultimate self awareness is beneficial no matter what the circumstance. To be able to go through an experience of intentional self understanding in examining your own life through the microscope of writing is a formidable exercise in metacognition and evaluation of worth and place in the world. Whether the conclusion of that examination is good or bad, I believe that the awareness of it is good, and beneficial no matter what the outcome of the search.
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