On Monday, actress Charlize Theron gave the tabloids — and Hustler columnists — something to talk about. To the audience of a charity auction in San Francisco, Theron was hawking a pair of tickets to see the world cup, a safari and a meeting with former South African president Nelson Mandela. However, the bidding for this holiday package stalled at a mere $37,000. Not to be outdone by actor Jeremy Pivon, who raised $280,000 by auctioning a walk-on role to his hit TV show Entourage, Theron raised the stakes by offering a kiss. Her gesture immediately sent the bidding up to $130,000, but the winner was a mysterious blonde woman, bidding $140,000 and taking center stage and the prize of a 20-second kiss with Theron.
We could laugh off this episode as yet another meaningless manifestation of our celebrity-mad culture. But as a person given to finding significance in everyday occurrences, who also happens to have a good 300 words worth of space to fill, I intend to turn it into a “teachable moment” on the task of quantifying subjective values.
Sit in a room with a philosophy professor for long enough, and the topic will eventually turn to values. After all, we all like to believe our lives have meaning, but what gives it this significance? How can we achieve “the good life” if we don’t even know what we want out of life? As humans, we all share some pretty basic values — friendship, love, experiences — but each person also has his or her own unique set of values. Pre-meds, future investment-bankers and spoiled brats notwithstanding, not all of us will have the means to buy our way into satisfaction, so we’ll need to look inward to determine our values rather than conveniently analyzing our end-of-the-month credit card statement.
A couple weeks ago, as a personal exercise, I decided to determine what in my life I really valued. I opened up an Excel spreadsheet and entered in everyone and everything of significance in my life, then assigned each an arbitrary point value. I organized the data into columns based on broad categories: “Friends,” “Teachers,” “Activities,” “Books,” etc. When all the tallies were made, my results were surprising. My “Friends” column totaled 2700, while music totaled a mere 630, and teachers and activities each totaled in the 500s. This exercise led me into some serious moral dilemmas. If both were trapped in a burning building and I could only save one, would I choose to save one of my better acquaintances, or 1984 and last year’s ASB trip? The implications for my future behavior are also unexpected; apparently I should give up reading and focus on my friends. This exercise is only for the brave of heart, but I recommend it to anyone who is curious.
A recent poll from Bank of America Student Banking found that only 29 percent of Americans 16 to 21 years old would take $10,000 to break up with their boyfriend/girlfriend. This confirms that America is full of rich parents and hopeless romantics, but it remains an open question what we would be willing to take for a covert, one-night fling. After all, Theron excused her random act of charity by saying “My boyfriend is not here tonight.” Moral of the story? Ladies and gentlemen, don’t date actors, keep your partners on a tight leash, and get your priorities straight. Friends and lovers will come and go, but only you can decide if your values are as superficial as a $140,000 kiss.
—Jesse Jones is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science. He can be reached at jesse.g.jones@vanderbilt.edu.
