human worth – John Reed For President

Continuation of: https://johnreedforpresident.home.blog/2019/06/01/human-worth-by-john-michael-reed/

I am an atheist, and at one point while growing up I thought that gay people or trans people were less valid as people because they can’t or don’t reproduce. This notion goes contrary to the notion that all human beings have intrinsic worth – that they are valuable regardless of whether they can attract the opposite sex, marry, or reproduce.

First I would like to say that even if you think that trans people are weird, creepy, gross, or anything like that, trans people are a legit category of people and they actually appear to benefit from a transition process that involves hormones, something that I have seen both in real life people and in people online. Example (fast forward to 0:37) :

“For me, I have absolutely no regrets about transitioning and it has made me a million times happier.”

Riley Dennis (37 seconds into this video)

But here is the thing. Imagine that these hormones weren’t invented yet or that they did not exist and that this transition process weren’t possible. Should these people be persecuted? Absolutely not.

Every single person ought to be valued not for what they have, how they identify, or who they are, but just for being a person. Every single one. Failing to do so leads down some very dark paths. For example, a disproportionately high percentage of trans people attempt suicide. In my opinion, suicide implies not valuing yourself as a person because if you valued your life, you wouldn’t take it away. Believing that human life doesn’t have intrinsic value means that people have to justify their existence in order to receive basic human decency like love, compassion, or care. This leads down some pretty dark paths. For example, the Nazis believed in a sort of quasi-scientific racism, one that does not value human life but rather puts different races or types of humans on a pyramid. This leads down some dark paths indeed, such as towards genocide. In the second formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, it says “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” I think that treating people as an ends in and of themselves implies that they have inherit value or worth.

Remember that whoever you are, you have intrinsic value. You don’t have to identify a certain way, attract the opposite sex, or do or be anything special in order to possess value. For example, maybe a trans person feels that a transitioning process is right for them, but that doesn’t mean that they should commit suicide if that process isn’t available to them because regardless, they themselves have intrinsic value. We all do.

In a perfect world, I don’t think people should have to fight for human rights. In a perfect world, all humans would just get them without having to fight. Unfortunately, that is not the real world.

John

I am one of the most self-centered people who I have ever seen, and I admit that. That being said, I truly believe the following: That all people are created equal. It doesn’t matter if you were created Black or White, rich or poor, male or female, religious or not religious, or what your sexual orientation is. Human beings have intrinsic worth regardless of their skin color, how much money they have in their bank account, their biology, how religious they are, their sexuality, etc. You could be a person who loves money and makes billions or you could live in a tent, but either way you have intrinsic worth as a human person. I have intrinsic worth regardless of my skin color, how much money is in my bank account, my sexuality, how religious I am, or even my biology, which by the way is possible to change with years of hormones followed by one or more surgeries. I have intrinsic worth regardless of these things, and so do you.

Each and every time I look at a person’s face and see them eye-to-eye, I see that they have value as a person.

These people who I met are Black and homeless, but they have human worth:

They have intrinsic worth, as do I. There are no worthless people on Earth.

In my opinion, it really doesn’t matter if you live in a tent under a bridge or if you live in a mansion. You are a person, and I am a person, and when we are together, we are people. If we look each other in the eyes, say “hello”, and talk back and forth, we can see human value in each other. I can see the worth in you regardless of whether you are a male person or a female person, a Black person or a White person, a gay person or a straight person, etc. We are all people, and we ALL have human worth.

Sometimes it is hard for some people to see the human worth in other people. For example, maybe a male person has a really hard time with female people and he is also a misogynist, or maybe one person just has a hard time understanding or interacting with the opposite sex. Or maybe they are racist, homophobic, or have some other problem that gets in the way of connecting with and seeing the worth of another human person. But I think with love, connection, and understanding, these barriers between people can be overcome. The differences between male and female people, between “city people” and “country people”, between people of different skin colors, and so forth can be overcome. Every person is a person, regardless of who they are.

That is what this campaign is about. It is about seeing human worth. Yes, I am self-centered, but I have human worth, regardless of whether you see it or not. I am a person, and I exist, and I have human worth, and this is true regardless of where I am on Earth, what language I speak, what my sexuality is, what hormones my body produces, and so forth. Each person has human worth, and maybe I don’t see it right away, but trust me when I say that when we make eye contact and have a face-to-face conversation, person-to-person, I know that the awareness will be there. We all have human worth, and all it takes to see that human worth is human connection.

We all have human worth. We are ALL America. #Love