The idea that people are more important than things is too obvious to serve as a foundation. It fails as a slogan and struggles as a principle. The modern world doesn’t so much argue with this truth as it simply bypasses it. We have built conditions where our focus shifts almost automatically toward what can be measured, compared, and accumulated. Things are convenient. We are not.
The Logic of Function
Things are easier to deal with because they are invulnerable. They do not suffer, they do not die, and they require no empathy. They are replaceable. Gradually, this “logic of objects” becomes our logic for treating one another—especially within large systems where we are reduced to functions, resources, or metrics.
The substitution happens quietly. Things begin to serve as the scaffolding for our self-worth. Through them, we try to validate our right to exist: to be useful, successful, relevant, and compliant.
At this point, we stop owning our assets and start serving them. Health becomes raw material for work. Relationships become the price of stability. Life becomes an investment in an idea, a structure, or a future that is always just out of reach.
The Symmetry of Devaluation
A crucial point: the devaluation of others almost never exists apart from the devaluation of oneself. It is a symmetrical process. You cannot treat a human being as a disposable resource and still maintain genuine self-respect—even if, on the surface, everything seems under control. If value is defined by utility, it is always conditional. Today you are needed; tomorrow you are not.
In this sense, pleas to “value human life” often feel powerless. We regularly surrender the value of our own lives—not always by choice, but often under the pressure of systems, circumstances, or fear. This isn’t a question of morality; it’s a question of inner grounding. Until we recognize our own life as an unconditional value, we remain incapable of seeing that same value in others.
A Life Non-Negotiable
The way out is neither collective nor ideological. It doesn’t lie in the right words or shared goals. It is only possible as an individual reassessment: the recognition of one’s own life as non-negotiable, non-servant, and non-auxiliary.
Only from this vantage point does a different relationship with our neighbor become possible—not as a tool, not as a backdrop for our own survival, and not as a competitor in a world of scarcity. Then, the very logic of our goals shifts: not “let everyone suffer but me,” and not “I shall suffer for the sake of a higher meaning,” but a search for forms of living where suffering is no longer a requirement for belonging.
This is not a utopia or a prescription. It is a reminder: if we once again become more important than what we produce, own, or represent, things automatically find their rightful place. Useful. Secondary. Subservient.