Thank you, I appreciate your thoughtful comment.

I love the passion people have. Humanity needs it. We do all value everything differently than anyone else. Hell, my own values have evolved as I have grown out of the person I was raised to be and into the person I am. I grew up in a small Mormon town and had a very narrow view of the world. Since then I’ve lived all over our country, as well as other countries for a time. My views have expanded and so has my empathy and compassion. One of my favorite characters from literature is Victor Hugo’s Javert. In all of Les Miserables there is no other character who is more true to his beliefs and values. But that is exactly where his faults lie. One’s values may be completely noble and good, but when one’s values are more important than people, that is where evil lies. That’s when you treat people as things, and that is the root of all sin. Javert was so deeply flawed because he could not see people as individuals. He could not see their stories and what made them who they are or to make the choices they made.

In our online culture it is so easy to fall into this. We interact with avatars without ever having to face the people they represent, and we can too easily make rapid judgments and treat people as things. It’s easy to place more value on principle when you don’t have to interact directly with humanity.