What do you value? (First thousand readers get free tickets to the thing they love, that means YOU!)

First They Came for the Jews
by Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.


Disclaimer: This is not philosophy, rather simply observations of life.

Living in a constant state of confusion and anger is hard, but this seems to be the only option going forward. I'm not saying it's 100% fury and not understanding where you are all the time, but I am saying that it is a varying degree of constant. It may be early Alzheimer's, but it's probably just a serious case of being human. You see, there are questions that have to be asked all the time, if you think about anything at all, then this is just the way it is. The more I learn, the more I have to ask about.
What I'm asking today is this;
How many people have I killed today?

This seems overly dramatic, so let me just say this - the number is zero.
Then I ask you, how many people have you killed today?
In all probability you are like me, with a very low-to-zero body-count. Good for you and everyone around you.
The caveat is this - You haven't actually actively, physically killed anyone. Unless you are in some very specific circumstances, you would remember killing someone. It takes some serious determination, or a certain degree of recklessness to kill. War and accidents happen. Carelessness happen. Most people seriously care if they kill someone by accident or recklessness.
So to put it bluntly, we try relatively hard not to kill people.*
Sure, there are other incentives to, you know, not killing people, like if you don't morally judge yourself, society will do it for you.
So we care about ourselves, we don't want to feel bad for violating our own values, and we don't want to go to jail.
I am going somewhere with this, I swear. I'm just working out what my gut is telling me as I'm going along here.
So, hum, yes. To sum up so far - We have values, we try not to kill people.
What else has value to us? That is highly individual, to say the least. But there is one thing everyone has agreed holds value. It is very close to the definition of value. Yes, indeed, it's money.
Value = money, money = value. Some less cynical people may not agree, to this and say that this is not the same type of value. Well, you may not think that, but do you practice what you preach? Because people tend not to, and I'd have to say that you are in fact and all actuality supremely wrong.
It is systematically built in to society, from top to bottom.
Money is a promise of everything. It is intrinsically useless, but it promises everything from a hot meal to a new house. And not just for you, but for your family, friends and everyone you love. It is not a small thing to be able to provide for those you love. It has value. On the other hand, on the hand that has no cash at all, it is hard to go hungry because you're broke. If you are so inclined, it might even be harder to see the people you care for go hungry, because you know, no money means no food or good stuff for your family.
So can we agree that money is a good tool for expressing your values, beyond the value of currency itself? I think we can. There is a price attached to anything and everything. Time is now money. I am currently throwing good money out of the window writing this, as there is no way I could monetize it, even if I wanted to.

So let me loop back to the big questions - how many people have you killed today, what do you value, and how do I connect this to what I'm working up to?

I will do it like this.
You know the famous poem First They Came for the Jews, by Martin Niemöller, right? Good.
Can we now assume that dead people that you didn't actively kill or even know at all, are all the same people? We don't care too much when people we don't know die somewhere else. And that is a good thing, because if you had to feel bad for every dead person every day, you'd be a wreck and we would've ended it all a long time ago, leaving the world to the psychopaths.**
But although we don't feel it emotionally, we are intellectually aware of it. So sometimes we do things with our money to bring our values to those who are knee-deep in the shit, ranging from donating old clothes to adopting a child from somewhere less nice than were we live.*** And all that stuff in between. 
Ok, so now we are getting there. 
We all live on the same planet, despite resurgent nationalism and a new-fangled fascination for giant walls, the world and society is more global than ever.
So riddle me this;
How is you having the ability to save the life of some unfortunate somewhere through simple use of money, and not doing it, not the same as letting everyone else die in Niemöller's poem? Because we teach that in school and get all righteous about that shit. 
And here I return to my question - how many people did you kill today, meaning, how many people that you could've saved with the use of some money (that we value), did you let die?
The thing is, once you get past the active/passive thing, I don't see the difference. Oscar Schindler seems to agree. And this is certainly not me passing judgement, I reckon I killed a good 20 people this week, just by doing nothing. I could've spent a good chunk of my paycheck to feed and educate some poor kids somewhere and still pay my bills.  It is against the law to not help someone in obvious distress in many countries. What the hell does that even mean? Are we talking about some Syrians or that old guy who froze to death in his car in Sweden, while his neighbours thought about helping and promptly did exactly nothing? Where do we draw the line? We draw it where it's comfortable, that's where. From the big pharma-company that hikes up the price of meds for the sake of profits, to the people who accept a government that enforces a system where wealth of the few is gained at the cost of the health of the many. The list goes on and on, because like I said, this is built into the system we live in. We have values, but we also have money, the ultimate value. 
So where is the value and how many people did you kill today? 



*Except for Potatobeak Cat, who has grown violent and resentful and wants me dead. Probably a result of being spoiled by certain other parties in the household of Casa del Hate.
**And what a brave new world that would be!
***Don't get me started on the price of adoption.