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Phuoc Nguyen
Ms. Lee
ERWC
20 February 2015

Value of Life Essay

Intrinsic and extrinsic qualities are both valued in this world. Emotional values of love,
hate, jealousy, bias are expressed as obviously as the need of materials that revolves around
everybody's life in a daily basis. Financial stability and money necessary to sustain life show this
need of materials that people cannot detach from. The life of just intrinsic values in reality cannot
exist apart from extrinsic values for they are both vital and necessary for one to survive and
hand-in-hand balance out one's life. Though intrinsic and extrinsic values unfortunately are in
contradiction to each other, they are valued as a combination in life for this inability-to-detach
characteristic of them.
Many people in life rejoice in the intrinsic values of the emotions they experience from
interactions with others and the thoughts they engaged in about life. Life to some people is
meaningless with just materials. In Frankenstein of Mary Shelley, one could become "ravished
with delight when seeing someone, every trait of sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly
expressed a degree of ecstatic joy" (Shelley 137). Emotion of joys and happiness can change
attitude and behavior of people from being sullen to overly ecstatic. The same instance can be
perfectly exemplified by the emotion of love. People when in love feel elated and fulfilled for the
intense affection and mutual attachment they feel from each other; This fulfillment is powerful

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enough to transform Frankenstein's "miserable" monster from being "malicious" to the world as a
result of the "forced solitude that he abhors" given by his creator who makes him cause crimes to
become "peaceful and human" enough to ask his creator for the "love of another", that he
strongly believes, can "destroy the cause of his crimes" (Shelley 174, 176, 178). Love also is
deemed by many financially stable individuals the real joy in life that they all seek for to balance
out their monotonous materialistic surroundings like Hamlet in Hamlet is a royal Denmark
prince with overflowing wealth and financial backing but still deeply wants to love Ophelia
saying:
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans, but
that I love thee best, oh, most best, believe it. Adieu.
Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet. (II.ii.111115)
Hamlet instead of living a meaningless life without love seeks out love as the motivation to enjoy
life and to live on joyfully. In reality, feelings of being in love as well as actions and interactions
of people in love have been proven by science to help alleviate pain as well as feelings of stress
and fear and can greatly transform human's emotions and mind. Likewise the major intrinsic
value of love which can benefit people tremendously in life, other intrinsic values of intelligence

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and passion for example can as well benefit people and upgrade their monotonous life of
materials to something irreplaceable by mere materials.
In his hierarchy of needs, Maslow stated that:
There are five levels in the hierarchy of needs and people are motivated to
achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled, a person seeks to fulfill the next
one . . . once the lower leveled needs have been satisfied, one may be able to
reach the highest level called self-actualization.
In this level, self-actualized individual as stated by Maslow "comes to find a meaning to life that
is important to them and seeks personal growth, satisfaction, and peak experiences" that are
closely related and can be achieved with the intrinsic qualities of intelligence and passion.
Intelligence equips people the ability to gain knowledge that could help them grow and
innovation happens when one is knowledgeable and passionate about what he or she loves to do.
In You've got to find what you love, Jobs says, "People've got to find what they love" because
"the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what they believe they love." This "satisfaction" is
generated from the valuable intrinsic qualities and is what allows people to live on joyfully and
can replace monotonous materials with enjoyment and the needs Maslow stated.
While intrinsic values greatly fulfilled people with life satisfaction and indescribable
emotions, without extrinsic values that keep humans' lives sustained, people could hardly have
the chance of experiencing these emotions generated from extrinsic values by keeping them
unworried of financial life. As society nowadays values money and individuals are treated based
on success in life and their money, people are constantly bombarded by the pressure of success
and "the reality" of that intrinsic qualities are generated by extrinsic qualities. Money allows

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people to be financially stable to enjoy intrinsic qualities and without money as the basic
possession in life, people are deprived of the chance of enjoying life intrinsically. For example,
the living expense in America generally and in California specifically is high with apartment
monthly rent of $2000 for a family together with monetary support for their household members
and even higher for family with private house and both with utility expense. People without the
extrinsic quality of money simply cannot support themselves and their families financially, so
they won't have time to think about intrinsic values that make them rejoice and happily live; And
those who want to be successful and be able to rejoice in thoughts and emotions, they all have to
go with "this reality." This need of finance is also clearly expressed in Maslow's hierarchy of
needs. While self-actualization is in fact the highest level of intrinsic growth human can get to,
Maslow also stated that "one also must satisfy lower level basic needs before progressing on to
meet higher level growth needs" and "the progress can be unfortunately disrupted by failure to
meet the lower level needs" which in this case are "shelter," "safety," "stability" that are
generated by money. Like the eventful Great Depression in history that flipped America upside
down with the disappearance of money and the tools to make money after the stock market crash
in 1929, the America which was in an economic renaissance before this event afterwards
completely stopped working and resulted in a staggeringly increasing rate of unemployment that
caused hunger and death to many people. Money with no doubt is the what allows people to live
intrinsically.
Individuals are always caught between intrinsic and extrinsic qualities while living in
this society facing and being bombarded by the need of extrinsic qualities, at the same time feel
tired of this monotonous money-based life and want to rely on the joy of intrinsic qualities. They

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constantly struggle to value the intrinsic qualities that they seek joy from and constantly struggle
to survive with materials and extrinsic qualities. The reality doesn't let them solely rely on
intrinsic qualities and they more than just extrinsically needy are intrinsically needy. As both
cannot separate from each other and hand-in-hand support and fulfill each other, individuals
must mediate and balance out their lives by valuing both these qualities to truly be happy.

Works Cited
McLeod, Saul. "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs." Simply Psychology. Simply Psychology,
17 Sept. 2007. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.
Jobs, Steve. "'You've Got to Find What You Love,' Jobs Says." Stanford
Report (2005): n. pag.Web.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
Kindle File
Shakespeare, William. SparkNotes. SparkNotes, 2003. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.