Self Worth

The other day, I heard that there is a different type of success that is not monetary.  Apparently the internet has spawned many people's ambition in making videos, writing, commenting, networking, etc.  So the younger generations are growing up with this stuff and it may cause them to measure their self worth by what they contribute rather than how much money they make.  I would like to explore this self worth a bit.

Long ago in the 1800's  there was a man who had no money but claimed to be Emperor.  Emperor of what you may ask?  Why Emperor of the country where he lived, the United States.  His name was Joshua Abraham Norton.  Ok, you may be grinning at this absurd information, but hear me out.  Norton was a business man who lost it all and became mentally unbalanced, and called himself Emperor of the United States.  Now this man may have well be a bar fly or a colorful character in San Francisco if it wasn't for his decrees and his money.  He issued both.  Who knows why, but his monetary notes were honored in San Francisco.  One of his decrees was that there should be a bridge and a tunnel that would enable travelers to travel across the San Francisco bay.  Both exist today.  Norton found self worth.  He had to give up money to be his self worth, and instead made himself important to himself and to his community.  This is the type of self worth we are seeing growing in the internet today.  Hopefully nobody will declare themselves Emperor of anything.

What do we have in the internet to make people contribute?  There's youtube, twitter, facebook, google+, and many other sites that are social in nature.  I write, so I use Scribd.com to let people read my work.  I don't expect to make money off of it.  I just like people reading my work.  I also write this blog.  It's fun, and it helps me hone a skill that helps me professionally.  I also get a thrill that people read my blog.  Its the stats that I look at.  I find self worth in writing and contributing to people's lives.

If this alternate self worth perpetuates and continues to grow, what could the future look like?  Perhaps we will have a utopian society like that in Star Trek as envisioned by Gene Roddenberry.  I can see a society where your contribution to society is not compensated in money but in food, shelter, and transportation.  Where the average person does not need money to survive.  If everyone contributes to their employment, and that effort is coordinated, why would anyone need to rely on money to live?  It's hard to imagine.  It's hard to conceive of it, but John Lennon sang of it in Imagine.  Some say that this is communism, but I beg the differ.  Russian, Chinese, and Cuban communism were not like this.  Marx wrote of a utopia society, but he also wrote how that would come about in his mind.  That was the communist manifesto.  I think the utopian society is not inherently Marxist, even though Marx wort about it.  No, I think it's an innate idea in all of us.  I believe it to be also written of in the book of Revelation.  If what were seeing now as a change in self worth and were headed to a utopian society, then Marx was wrong in how we got there.  Today we see things that are small ecosystems of a utopian society.  These things include, insurance, food stamps, Social Security, Veterans Administration, Charity organizations,  employee benefits, etc.  You may not like the idea of a utopian society, but I think if employees were given their food, housing, and travel, then we wouldn't have a housing market collapse.

Self worth in the form of contribution is on the rise.  It may not be a bad thing and it may lead to a better future for all.  That is for all except the money grubbers.