1

Madelyn Eisenbart

Marcum

English 4P

5 December 2016

It Will All End in Tears

Life can be valued in many different ways. For example, gods are values more over

humans life, but how did they earn that value? In other cases, humans value other humans lives

based on personal beliefs. Some of these personal beliefs on value can be on consciousness,

financial, personal connection, personal experience and age. In American contemporary society,

people's view on human life should be based on the circumstances because many people have

different views on the value of others.

Assigning a financial value on someone's life can be quite difficult. The Human Life

Calculator was designed to assign a monetary value to a human life. This calculator includes

topics on your annual wage earnings, your retirement plan and investments. These topics give an

estimate of the approximate value of your financial contribution to society. These results will

vary depending on your occupation, pension and investments. This final value can be used to

show future contribution to your family and about how much they can get from your insurance

depending on your company and plan you have. Situationally, if your life has more monetary

value than others, that would put you in a higher class. However if we were to measure the value

of a human life based on experience, the result of position may be different.

 2

Many people take personal experience into consideration when thinking about someone's

value over another. Often, it is pitied. Personal experience could come from your career, your

health history or even near death encounters. Roger Ebert was a wonderful writer, and became

the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. (Jones 19). Many people respected this man

because of his occupation. In 2002, he was diagnosed with salivary gland cancer and thyroid

cancer. He had to get his jaw removed and he spent most of four years stretched out in hospitals.

He was unable to speak, eat or drink without technology (Jones 8-13). Because of his

experiences, people often felt bad for Ebert, while he felt no pity towards himself. This sympathy

lead to people ultimately idolizing and admiring him for overcoming these obstacles in his life.

American society should value human life on different circumstances because people

value lives differently. By viewing the Human Calculator and Chris Jones article The Essential

Man on Roger Ebert's life can show how the value of human life is situational. You can not put

more value on someone's life who has monetary value than to someone who doesn't but has more

personal experience.