Making Value An Intrinsic Part Of Our Lives

Bringing the principle of value and its importance into our awareness

In this article we will be focusing on gaining a deeper insight into the concept of value. It should be stated from the beginning though that, for many of us in the world today, we generally look at the concept of value from the perspective of it being something which is quantifiable in nature. For example, when hearing this word, we may be inclined to think about how much something costs or how much something is worth. Rather, in this article, we are focusing on the principle of value which is indicated by the same word but has a different meaning.

The two of these meanings are linked to some degree, as we will see later, which can make things confusing but, unless we see the distinction between these two meanings, the essence contained in this article will be lost. A simple way in which we can interpret the distinction between these two meanings is to think of the difference between value with respect to quality, as opposed to value with respect to quantity. Value as a quality exists in varying degrees within every single ‘thing’ regardless of its quantity and, as we will come to see later, it is the ordering of things which plays some role in determining the true value of something, at least to some degree.

One of the key inspirations for this article arose in the final stages of finalizing and publishing a book that was being written. It had been decided that the book would be self-published and so the process of researching how to practically go about doing this commenced. Primarily using the internet, relevant information on the topic was found that helped to outline the technical aspects behind the process of self-publishing a book.

As the search for this information was conducted, it became increasingly apparent that much of the information that was being returned in these searches was focused on how to produce books which required as little input as possible, whilst giving the author a maximum ‘return’, despite the fact that this was not what was being specifically searched for. These types of books are varied, sometimes being referred to as ‘low content’ books, and are usually diaries, journals, or other books of a similar nature. As the name suggests, the idea behind the creation of this type of book is to produce something which is sellable with as little content contained within it as possible. This in turn means that the author or publisher makes the most money whilst investing a comparatively small amount of money and time.

This phenomenon was so prevalent in the search results, that a vast majority of the searches returned results relating to this idea specifically or something of a similar nature. It was interesting to observe this because, in many ways, much of the information that was being sifted through was not applicable to the type of book that was being published in this particular instance. Encountering this phenomenon served as the catalyst that began the process of contemplating deeply upon why so many of the results were focused on something else. Ultimately, the focus of these searches being on this subject matter must have been so pervasive for a reason.

Certain insights came about as a result of consciously observing the situation which can best be phrased into a variety of different questions that will be answered over the course of this article. Why was so much of the content being returned in these searches so focused on these types of books? Can we gain any insights from this? Do we find similar phenomena existent in other aspects of our society and culture, not just in the world of publishing?