It is cliché to say that we are living through a period of drastic historical change: every period reflects the perennial ebb and flow of history, nothing ever remaining static. But sometimes this change is extraordinary in both intensity and impact. And if any historical junction deserves such a characterisation, it is the one we are living through right now. For a number of never-before-seen dynamics that stand to dramatically impact human life are converging: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will drastically change the way we work and look upon ourselves; geopolitical tensions and, almost certainly, related armed conflict at a global scale will again challenge the international order and upset countless human lives; the rise of post-truth and conspiracy-theory mentality will continue to profoundly upset our culture and information space; and in-your-face climate change will render large swaths of the planet uninhabitable for humans, leading to dramatic demographic shifts.
In this context of extraordinary change we must be extra careful and vigilant about how we define and look upon human dignity. For it is how we regard ourselves that sets the tone for whether the changes that are coming will tip towards something positive or vastly negative instead. For instance, the way we look upon ourselves will determine whether AI developments will equate us to mere mechanisms that are being rendered increasingly redundant, or creative miracles who will be set freer by the advent of AI. It is how we regard ourselves that will determine whether we care for the millions of Bangladeshis and Dutch whose homes will be flooded by higher sea levels once land ice in Greenland and Antartica melts (which will happen rather suddenly), or regard them merely as cattle that needs to be relocated to some tent camp somewhere dry.
The way we define human dignity is the crux of the matter here, and the common underlying theme that informs all of the converging dynamics cited above. What is it that makes human life valuable? What is it that makes it important? If you think these two questions are synonymous, then that is already an alarming misunderstanding that may determine whether we are all going to hell in a hand basket. For value and importance are two entirely different things, particularly when it comes to human lives.
We often associate both our value and importance with what we do in life. To convince yourself of it, just ask yourself if you think that someone who does nothing for a living is either important or valuable. Work or activity is tightly linked to our sense of dignity, and it has been so for a very long time. Therefore, it is crucial that we approach how activity determines our dignity in an examined, careful manner. It is crucial that we understand the relationship between activity and value on the one hand, and activity and importance on the other.
Value is determined by market dynamics of scarcity or abundance. If very few other people can perform the work you can perform, then your work is valuable. Let me take myself as an example: I am both a philosopher of mind and a computer scientist/engineer. Not many people can do these things, for they require long, arduous education and experience, as well as high intellectual capacity of a certain type. Because not many people out there can sit and design a Neural Processing Unit (NPU, an AI-focused computer processor), I get handsomely rewarded for designing one. In other words, it is market dynamics that determine my value. If something is highly desired but very few people can produce it, these few people become valuable.
But that doesn't mean that tasks that a great many people can perform, despite commanding less value, aren't important. Take trash collection, for instance: most people can perform the task of collecting trash. So trash collectors do not command high salaries, bonuses, or other forms of special financial compensation. If a trash collector becomes unhappy with their pay and decides to quit, countless others can be found to fill the vacancy. So trash collectors do not command high market value. Yet, this does not mean that trash collectors aren't important.
If all trash collectors were to disappear, civilisation would literally come to an end. There can be no industry, no system of education, no high technology, and generally no large-scale human productive activity without trash collection. You may say that, if trash collectors were to quit, you and I could collect the trash ourselves instead. And that is true; but it also means that there would still be trash collectors: you and I. The scenario here is that no one would collect trash, not even you or I. That would be a civilisation-ending scenario, which means that trash collection is very highly important, despite commanding low value.
In contrast, civilisation would continue without people like me: if all computer scientists/engineers and philosophers of mind were to disappear, our high technology and metaphysics would be in trouble but everything else would go merrily on. We would revert to living the way people lived before the Second World War, which was pretty alright. A fairly modern form of life would continue. But without trash collectors, it wouldn't; we would, instead, be thrown back to a pastoralist form of life, after which billions of us would die because pastoralism can't support 8 billion bipedal apes on this small rock. Clearly, thus, trash collectors are more important than philosophers of mind and computer scientists/engineers, even though the latter command more value because of the market dynamics of scarcity.
Now ask yourself this: which matters most when it comes to human dignity, value or importance? Methinks the answer here is crystal clear: importance, of course, is more central to human dignity. Value is merely a matter of changing market dynamics, while importance constitutes the very foundation of human civilisation. A trash collector is more important than me, quite literally, and this should be obvious to everyone, including the trash collector.
But we live in a culture that mistakes value for importance and, therefore, pooh-poohs the trash collector, the farmer, the carpenter, the sewer worker, the roofer, and all those people whose activity constitutes the indispensable foundation of human civilisation, even if they don't command high market value. Such a skewed and incredibly dangerous cultural dynamics, created and maintained by the psychology of urban elites, robs important people of their own sense of dignity. This, in turn, is what feeds a natural but equally skewed and dangerous reaction in the form of populism. For populist politicians pray on the justifiable sense of anger that reigns among those who have been robbed of their dignity by urban elites.
The responsibility for correcting this skewed and harmful state of affairs lies with all of us, but mostly with urban elites, which count me in their ranks. We must re-examined our knee-jerk assumptions and revise the way we look upon, and treat, those doing critically important work without which we couldn't have the lives we lead. We must become explicitly aware of the fundamental distinction between value and importance, and thereby treat important people with the dignity they deserve.
And as for those important people who command less market value than urban elites, it is incumbent upon them to separate their own sense of personal dignity from the knee-jerk discourse of urban elites. Know your importance, regardless of what others think. Those who think you are unimportant are simply confused and taken in by knee-jerk psychological issues; you don't need them to know how important you are. And know that your anger is justified. But beware of letting this justified anger make you easy pray to those eager to leverage it for their own gain, particularly those who, ironically, come precisely from the heart of urban elites and schmooze only with 'valuable' peers.
