Think outside the box!
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How much do you value your body?
In the film noir classic, The Third Man, Orson Welles (as the supposedly dead Harry Lime) looks down from the top of a Ferris wheel and asks Joseph Cotton (as the very naive Hollie Martins) about the people moving about on the ground..."dots" he calls 'em. Welles poses the tantalizing question of just how many dots Cotton would allow to "stop moving" if offered $20,000 for each (remember, this was over 60 years ago). How might we respond if presented with such an offer? Surely, it's obscene to talk about humans having a monetary value?
Perhaps so, but here's but one example of human life as commodity: the Ford Pinto scandal in the 1970s. It seems that the hapless Pinto couldn't withstand a rear-end impact of 30 mph without risking a fuel tank rupture. The government stepped in and actually tried to create a new regulation. The Big Boys at Ford balked, providing a mathematical formula to prove their greedy point. Here's how consumer advocate Ralph Nader explains it:
"Ford set the cost of a human life at $200,000, a burn injury at $67,000, and the value of an incinerated auto at $700. Ford then figured in that in Pintos there would be 180 deaths, 180 burn injuries, and 2100 burned vehicles per year. Using those figures, Ford set the benefit of the 30 mph standard at $49.5 million per year. Ford then stated that it would cost the company $11 per auto to meet the standard for a total cost of $137.5 million."
Fortunately, the type of "value" I'm talking about here in relation to our bodies is far more positive. It's about the steps we can take to demonstrate how much we value our precious time here on Earth and how that value can translate into us being better earthlings.
Keep reading to learn 5 Ways to Value Your Body.
