Sacrifice

Sacrifice is a word that is completely misunderstood and misused in our current cultural vocabulary. This is important because the concept of sacrifice is at the center of the biggest ethical debate in history. The dominant ethical theory of our day, the theory of Altruism, places sacrifice in the high seat of it's cardinal virtue. According to Altrusit theories, both the religious and the secular, sacrifice is the moral duty and the highest moral aspiration of men.

But what does it mean to sacrifice? An accurate definition would be to give up a higher value for a lesser value. For example: you value time spent with your family more than time spent with a borish aquantance, but you give up time spent with your family (higher value) to spend time with the aquantance (lesser value). That could be described as a sacrifice. Though the example is a seamingly trivial one, it serves to show in a simple way how one could sacrifice. Unfortunately the term is not very often used in this way. It is more often misused in the following ways:

-"Sacrifice to get blessings" This is one that most church goers will be familiar with. It is the promise that if you give up certain things now, you will recieve greater things later. This is called the principle of sacrifice, but it has nothing at all to do with sacrifice! Put aside whether you believe in God or not, that is not relevant to the question at hand. The question is what is being advocated by the principle described above? The best word that should be used is investment. When you give up a value, but do so in anticipation of a future greater value as a return, is that a sacrifice? No it is not. Just consider the act of investing in stock, you give up a value (money) in order to gain a greater value in the future (more money). The fact that this example deals with money, while others do not is irrelevant.

-"You must sacrifice in your relationship in order to make it work." This statement is usually given as advice with the implicit understanding that what is meant is that in order to have a happy relationship each person has to give up some things that they might have otherwise valued, such as time with friends, hobbies, goals, energy, etc. The problem though is that what is overlooked is the enormous value that one recieves in return, a happy fullfilling relationship! Of course the advice includes this aspect in it, and yet few people make the mental connection that if they are giving something up for something that they really want more they are not sacrificing. They are merely paying the price that is required to maintain a happy relationship. If on the other hand one does not value the relationship as much as the things being given up it could be properly termed a sacrifice. But in that case the couple has no buisness pretending to be in love, and there is no point giving them advice.

-"You need to sacrifice now while you are going to school so you can have a great job later." I won't say anything more about this one because it should be obvious that it makes the same mistake as the last two.

There are myriad other examples, but they all share the same error: they use the word sacrifice to denote giving up anything in order to get something you value more in the future, which is really investment. Why does this matter at all? Am I just arguing symantics? The answer is that words direct our thought. Our conceptual faculty is based upon using words to denote ideas. When a word becomes corrupted and is used with incorrect meaning is also corrupts the underlying ideas in our minds. When you use the word sacrifice to describe what is really investment you associate sacrifice in your mind with something good and useful. Then later when someone (your preacher, politician, professor, etc.) tells you that you need to sacrifice, and this time they really mean sacrifice, i.e. give up things you value for nothing in return, then you have a hard time resisting them because you have implicitly accepted that sacrifice is good. After all, you reason to yourself, I sacrificed all those times in the past and it turned out well, so it must be a true principle. And then they've got you. In fact this is often the goal of those that pervert words and their meaning. Its a form of the old bait and switch tactic.

So what is the lesson to be taken away from this? 1) Works have exact meanings and they are important. 2) If you want something, pay the price for it. (but don't fool yourself that you are 'sacrificing')