A passage

Since I'm at home, I really only do a few things. I go to the gym. I go grocery shopping to make sure the stuff I want is around the house. I sleep. I read. That's about it. My current book is Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. Heinlein is one of my favorite authors, pretty much everyone should read some of his work. Stranger in a Strange Land was really good, albeit somewhat overrated in all honesty. It did kind of lost steam 2/3 of the way through the book. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is far better, and a better bang for your attention span (being less than 200 pages as I remember). He's got a lot of libertarian stuff in there, which I like, but he's not as crazy as an Ayn Rand (whom I also like, thank you very much...).

Anyways, I wanted to put in a passage that I really enjoyed from Starship Troopers. It follows. The setting is a classroom, with a soldier-turned-civics-teacher talking to his students.

"This very personal relationship, 'value,' has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him . . . and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.

"Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain." He had half been still looking at me and added, "If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby has to struggle to live you would be happier . . . and much richer. As it is, with some of you, I pity the poverty of your wealth. You! I've just awarded you the prize for the hundred-meter dash. Does it make you happy?"

"Uh, I suppose it would."

"No dodging please. You have the prize--here, I'll write it out: 'Grand prize for the championship, one hundred-meter sprint.' " He had actually come back to my seat and pinned it on my chest. "There! Are you happy? You value it--or don't you?"

I was sore. First that dirty crack about rich kids--a typical sneer of those who haven't got it--and now this farce. I ripped it off and chucked it at him.

Mr. Dubois had looked surprised. "It doesn't make you happy?"

"You know darn well I placed fourth!"

"Exactly! The prize for first place is worthless to you . . . because you haven't earned it. But you enjoy a modest satisfaction in placing fourth; you earned it. I trust that some of the somnambulists here understood this little morality play. I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion . . . and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself--ultimate cost for perfect value."

Obviously this is Heinlein himself speaking through the teacher. Some of what he says can get kind of nutty. For example, the next longish philosophical discussion he gets into is about how awesome corporal punishment is. But I particularly like this speech, and especially the last part about how the best things in life can be achieved only through agony, sweat, and devotion. The question I would ask, though, is whether agony, sweat and devotion put into one's job to earn money is a value-granting.

The way I see it, if you're someone who goes out and starts your own restaurant from scratch, bringing it to success -- this has value. But it gets tricky if, let's say, you cruise through college and get a job working in middle-management for some clown insurance company. You make a good amount of money and can lead a comfortable life. Are you really doing something that has "value," the way Heinlein outlines the concept? Perhaps this is all a little philosophical, but the minute I read that passage, the wheels started turning and I really wanted to discuss it with someone. Too bad I'm at home...