Still her choice

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Who determines the worth of a person?

Who gets to decide this person is worth more than this person?

And just because you're important doesn't mean you're necesssary

I do not refer to finances here. Go wide. I mean the intrinsic worth of a person, their value to themselves, their family, their community and on until you get to the world as a whole.

Is a person who spends his (or her) life quietly running a motograder scraping dirt roads worth more or less than say Brittney Spears? Is the president of the United States worth less than a commercial fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico?

How are you gonna determine this?

I can think of a few ways:

• How many people are affected and effected by the person.

• How many people believe in the person, the goals, aims and achievements, whether or not these are realized.

• How the person lives his or her life.

• What the person does with his or her life. (which is not the same as the one just above this.)

Any idea why I included this image?

I could probably come up with more, but I'm more interested in knowing the ways you might consider the worth of a person.

Careful with that ax Eugenics (with apologies to Pink Floyd).

So, what about Amy Winehouse? In case you don't know, she killed herself last week. Wanted to kill herself in fact. Succeeded in grand style. That she got what she asked for and it maybe wasn't what she wanted, well that's still her choice.

This was news because Winehouse was a celebrity. I think. I believe, from scanning the headlines in my news feed, she was a singer.

I also do not know and am steadfastly refusing to know the circumstances of her demise, beyond knowing she got what she asked for. I'm also rejecting any and all attempts to inform me further about the woman.

Its the results that count, not the method. Or is it?

I ask you why Winehouse is more important that a person down the street who also self-destructs.

I have no said she is more important, despite this commentary. I merely use her to point out a hypocrisy.

There are people, I am certain, who will weep, wail and gnash their teeth over Winehouse' death, never mind the woman had no idea about the very existence of the people who are so upset. Yet these same people can hear about the same death of someone they actually know, albeit not very well, and aside from a "Oh, I'm so sorry" they never think about it again.

"But she touched me. Her work meant so much to me," you say.

Ah. Did you bother to find out about the person down the road? The one who also self-destructed? Did you ever see if that person could touch you even more deeply? Did you ever consider the person down the road was actually willing to talk to you? What do you really know about Winehouse and what do you really know about the person down the road?

But then, it's too late to know anything more about either one of them directly. Not that you'd ever had a chance to learn about the real Amy Winehouse. But you could have learned about the real person who lived down the road.

Which person is really more important?