The Value of a Man Is His Price?

"The value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power, and therefore is not absolute, but a thing dependent on the need and judgement of another." Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan

One of my students in NYPD police training mailed me a paper this week to complete his last course for graduation. He noted happily in a note that he was one of the lucky ones. He would be starting at $40,000 a year rather than at $25,000 -- the new starting salary for beginning cops just negotiated with our police union.

I thought of Hobbes' sardonic comment above -- and also of another of my students who was then a NYPD officer trying to complete his degree in preparation for law school. He had asked me to become his program advisor for his CUNY B.A. degree, a special subdivision within CUNY that allows students to fit schedules and programs of study to their interests. No sooner had he gotten started with this program than he was severely injured when a perp rammed his police car into a telephone pole, badly damaging his back. The next year or so involved attempted healing and then the determination that he would be permanently disabled with considerable pain. He tried to keep on with his studies, but eventually dropped out, deeply depressed. In effect his hoped for career had been wiped out with this terrible accident and a lifetime of suffering substituted in its place.

I am hearing of too many individuals and their families being stranded and left with lives either lost or horribly mangled by our war ventures now in the Middle East. Earlier I had recommended to some of my students that they might wish to get their future professional training with the military. No longer, however, can one with a straight face make such recommendations. One senses that there are separate tracks now for our kids to pursue. Some guarantee a life of comfort and security. Others are highly hazardous and may end one up either dead or disabled.

I don't like this modern American equation. One is worth now what one is forced to sell one's body for? This is no way to determine human worth -- or at least we have regressed terribly back towards the times when Hobbes could set his equation along these lines. Not good. Not good at all!
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
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Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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