Creating Value | Psychology Today

Value is “the human cobweb,” as Jerome Kagan aptly put it. To know anything about spiders, you have to understand the one thing that makes them unlike all other insects: They make cobwebs. To know about human beings you have to grasp our ability to make things important to us – above and beyond survival utility – and worthy of appreciation, time, energy, effort, and sacrifice. You must understand our ability and our drive to create value.That’s right, we create value. We have to create it because it doesn’t exist in nature. You will never see a sign in a starry sky or under a sunset, a baby’s face, lover’s smile, work of art, or pile of money that reads, “Value this.” All value is imposed on the world by the innate human drive to create it.

Creating Value | Psychology Today