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Could a person be near-worthless then? Consider a person who has nothing to truly offer to someone, nothing that couldn't be bested by many many others.
I think so. I would classify those who don't contribute to society and are able/
Could a person be near-worthless then? Consider a person who has nothing to truly offer to someone, nothing that couldn't be bested by many many others.
How can a person have nothing to offer others? Anyone can volunteer somewhere and help make the world a better place.
Chuang Tzu once spoke in defense of a "useless" tree...
Quote:
Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, "I have a big tree named ailanthus. Its trunk is too gnarled and bumpy to apply a measuring line to, its branches too bent and twisty to match up to a compass or square. You could stand it by the road and no carpenter would look at it twice. Your words, too, are big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!"
Chuang Tzu said, "Maybe you've never seen a wildcat or a weasel. It crouches down and hides, watching for something to come along. It leaps and races east and west, not hesitating to go high or low-until it falls into the trap and dies in the net. Then again there's the ***, big as a cloud covering the sky. It certainly knows how to be big, though it doesn't know how to catch rats.
Now you have this big tree and you're distressed because it's useless. Why don't you plant it in Not-Even-Anything Village, or the field of Broad-and-Boundless, relax and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it? Axes will never shorten its life, nothing can ever harm it. If there's no use for it, how can it come to grief or pain?"
Could a person be near-worthless then? Consider a person who has nothing to truly offer to someone, nothing that couldn't be bested by many many others.
You are putting things together that do not rightly go together. One is a person that has nothing to offer. The other is one who is not as good as others. Their worth can not be adjudged in the same way.
Once again, I ask why the question? If you are feeling worthless than you need help from outside or from inside yourself. A person should always have self worth which is different than worth attached by others. For instance, to me I am irreplaceable of incalculable worth. Others the world away would put little to no worth on me, they know me not. That does not impact me in the least. If the whole world thought I was "worthless" than perhaps I would need to adjust how I lived so as to not appear that way to them.
You need to ponder why you think the way you do. It is a very dangerous way to think.
"If there's no use for it, how can it come to grief or pain?"
Trust me Mr. Tzu, it can.
Well, I think he had a slightly different scenario in mind - I doubt he chased a lot of women after he "gave up" society and became a monk...
But yeah - sometimes being labeled "useless" is a GOOD thing - whenever my ex- wanted something done around the house she'd look at me, pause, mutter "useless" and call in a contractor.
Thus, I achieved harmony and peace by being "useless".
To me, there's a rough calculus to the question. Namely is this a person who creates a better world based on his treatment of others? Or is this a person who is nothing more than a destroyer of happiness in others?
Assuming that we're speaking of people with normal faculties then, yes, I think there are some people who are worthless. I've known people who have left a trail of destruction behind them in the form of destroyed lives. I've known people who preyed on the generosity of others. I've known people who simply gave no thought to others and the messes they create--and their potential be damned. Oh, sure, there are those who turn their lives around. But even then, those are people who decide to assign value to their own lives. It is not up to me to create it for them.
So if the world would have been a better place had that person never been born, that constitutes worthlessness in my book. Anything else is a bunch of pious gibberish.
Basically, can a person have nothing of value to offer to others, except maybe their own family? What do you think?
Yes, they are what I like to call young souls.
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