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Value, price and cost of lives to be saved
Systematic Humanitarian Blackmail via Aquarius? (Part #3)
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Curiously the symbolic realm is even more profoundly central to the life-saving operation of Aquarius. This is evident in the unexamined manner in which value is mysteriously associated with human life -- and with the sense of fundamental human values. It is this to which Angela Merkel most notably refers in repeatedly justifying her argument that "all are welcome" (Michael Gerson, Germany's defiant decency in the refugee crisis, The Washington Post, 10 December 2015; Dwight Longenecker, 'All Are Welcome' is a troubling message, Catholic Education Resource Center, 2015; Niamh Hardiman, A smart or a bold move: how Merkel dealt with the refugee crisis, Dublin European Institute, 23 July 2016; An Ill Wind: in Europe and at home, Angela Merkel's refugee policy is being blown away, The Economist, January 2016).
Pricelessness? Being central to the framing of life-saving, this assumption of value is typically not open to any reasonable discussion -- especially by the heartless. Lives are to be saved at any cost, as recently evidenced by the intense media coverage of the 12 children trapped underground in Thailand. No cost could be spared.
Simultaneously it was of course evident the many situations in which an equivalent number of people (or typically far more) were confronted by crisis and fatality -- but evoking only the most modest response, if any (Binu Mathew, Kerala Flood is Thousands of Times the Magnitude of Thai Cave Rescue! Yet Stillâ-.... CounterCurrents, 18 August 2018). Considerable effort is of course made to ensure maximum media coverage of those endeavouring heroically to cross the Mediterranean at risk to their lives -- and of those endeavouring to save them.
On the other hand it is also evident, but with far less media coverage, the number of lives "lost" in conflict arenas -- especially those fatalities framed as unfortunate "collateral damage" as a consequence of military action deemed essential (most notably for the protection of Europe against potential fatalities from terrorism). It has been remarked that the number of victims of terrorist strikes in Europe is far exceeded by the number resulting from "collateral damage" in those arenas caused by daily military action there -- in which European countries upholding the highest human values are complicit (Evaluating the Grossness of Gross Domestic Product: Refugees Per Kiloton (RPK) as a missing indicator? 2016)..
Value of human life? This raises the traditional question of the value of human life as variously reviewed (On the Value and Inviolability of Human Life, Evangelium Vitae, 25 March 1995; W. Kip Viscusi, The Value of Life, Harvard Law School, June 2006; Agamoni Majumder and S. Madheswaran, Meta-analysis of Value of Statistical Life Estimates, Society and Management Review, 6 January 2017; Meta-analysis of Value of Statistical Life Estimates, OECD; What is the Value of Human Life? Truth Source; Frank Partnoy, The Cost of a Human Life, Statistically Speaking, The Globalist, 21 July 2012).
Most extraordinary are the estimates of the "price of life" in the USA -- measured in millions of dollars (As U.S. Agencies Put More Value on a Life, Businesses Fret, The New York Times, 16 February 2011). These may of course be compared with the price of an underworld contract to terminate a life.
As noted by Kathleen Kingsbury (The Value of a Human Life: $129,000, Time, 20 May 2008):
In theory, a year of human life is priceless. In reality, it's worth $50,000. That's the international standard most private and government-run health insurance plans worldwide use to determine whether to cover a new medical procedure.... Stanford economists have demonstrated that the average value of a year of quality human life is actually closer to about $129,000.
Another perspective is offered by J. Mario Molina (The Value of a Human Life, Morning Consult, 21 July 2017):
The federal government has an interest in this question, too. Different agencies have set different values on a human life. The Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a life at $9.1 million in 2010. The Food and Drug Administration, on the other hand, came up with a value of $7.9 million and finally, the Transportation Department said it was around $6 million.
Various methodologies for assessing the value of human life are usefully explained for the Global Value Exchange (GVE), a crowd sourced database of "values, outcomes, indicators and stakeholders". As noted for different methodologies (Valuation of Life, 9 June 2016):
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Value of a "soul"? Such preoccupations in the here and now offer curious echoes to the process by which the value of a life is assessed in the hereafter -- according to different traditions, dating from Ancient Egypt. These have their current implications for those preoccupied by the advent of Judgment Day.
In the context of this argument the relative value of life is symbolically framed by one of the principal supporting organizations of Aquarius, namely SOS Méditeranée. The acronym stands for "Save Our Souls" -- with the irony that many of the "souls" may be of Islamic persuasion, who might otherwise be framed as lacking them. The latter consideration offers a reminder that for some the lives of others, those defined as "nobodies", are indeed "worthless". They may well be treated as "cannon fodder" with its strange relation to "canon fodder" (Capital Punishment of Canon Fodder: death penalty contradictions in the declaration of the Pope, 2018)
Central to the religious dimension, and to the hypocrisy framed by "just war theory" (and its modern framing of "just sacrifice"), is the controversy relating to the divine injunction: Thou Shalt Not Kill. The injunction necessarily excludes responsibility for "allowing people to be killed" -- potentially recognized as the crime of "withholding aid to those in danger".
Cost of saving a life? Beyond the extreme costs of some forms of medical care, far less evident is what it is appropriate to invest in saving a life -- or a "soul" -- as illustrated by the cave rescue in Thailand. The issue is especially controversial with respect to the disrproportionate costs of medical care for the elderly.
In engaging on their perilous quest, refugees may be obliged to pay a high price to intermediaries. This recalls the symbolism in Greek mythology of the requisite payment to Charon -- the ferryman who carries the souls of the newly deceased across the rivers dividing the world of the living from the world of the dead. The refugees may be obliged to borrow heavily from relatives to whom they then have a debt, which may be payable through enabling the controversial "family reunion" process -- perceived by some as a means of disguising the full extent of migration.
Such arguments also frame the controversial question of whether some lives are more worth saving than others. The issue is clearly central to national identity, as with the massive sanctions currently applied against Turkey by the USA to achieve the repatriation of Pastor Andrew Bunson. The converse is of course evident in the massive cost of terminating the life of Osama bin Laden and the like.
The deeply religious dimension is further highlighted by controversy regarding contraceptives, abortion, assisted dying, and capital punishment.
Cost of a life? Whilst lives may indeed have a value, with which a price may be associated, they can also be recognized as having a cost. Of major concern to some is the cost of an extra life on a planet of increasingly constrained resources. How indeed is the cost of an "extra mouth to feed" to be related to assessment of the value of human life?
Potentially more problematic are the costs relating to the use of other scarce resources. These are notably a focus of the methodology of assessment of the ecological footprint of concern to the Global Footprint Network and determination of Earth Overshoot Day.
In a world of ever increasing inequality, some lives will clearly cost more than others -- as articulated with respect to control of resources by 1% of the population -- and proportionately exhorbitant costs would be devoted to saving them.
Missing from the argument framed in this way is the associated value and cost of the lives of the species on which humanity may prove to be dangerously dependent -- especially those in danger of disappearing in the course of the ongoing Holocene Extinction. Ironically, the currently polarized debate with regard to loss of biodiversity could be usefully seen as another instance of that between the "headless hearts" and the "heartless heads", as clarified by Ehsan Masood (The Battle for the Soul of Biodiversity: an ideological clash could undermine a crucial assessment of the world's disappearing plant and animal life, Nature, 22 August 2018). The conflict is evident within the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a younger sibling of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Implicit criterion of genetic selection? It is of course the case that the lives of thousands, if not millions, are in current danger in the countries of Africa from which many seek refuge in Europe. The current investment in saving their lives is relatively modest -- if not extremely modest -- and questionably made.
The valuation of life is however shifted by the perception that refugees are undertaking a life-endangering journey -- culminating in the risks of traversing the Mediterranean. Whereas migrants are readily refused when applying through normal channels, placing their souls at risk is seen as changing the rules of the game. Their lives thereby become "worth saving". Rules can be set aside.
Cynically this could be understood as a new criterion of migrant selection -- a genetic selection process based on risk-taking capacity in response to the need for enhancing the European labour force. It is somewhat reminiscent of the much-deprecated eugenic process of the past -- for those with Aryan racial characteristics. That a percentage should be sacrificed by drowning during the process has been curiously transformed into a significant guarantee that their companions are worthy of refugee status.
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