Merton's Values (NJ7)


I have been thinking about Thomas Merton’s passage “Rain and the Rhinoceros.”  While I do not feel as if I am an outsider in the city as he does, I think he reflects on some important concepts that evade most people. His initial quip about the rain becoming sold as a commodity one day started his argument that some believe that “what has no price has no value.”  I have always been fascinated by the relationship between price and value when considering products or services.  Often, people are terrible at determining the value of something without considering its price. We have been taught to understand that “you get with you pay for” so an expensive item must be more valuable than its cheaper counterpart. With that said, how do we determine the value of the land without a price tag? Is it even fair to put a monetary value on something that existed far before us?

I was thinking about these questions when Michelle was talking on Wednesday about how Fort Worth bought the land from ranchers. I wonder how they decided on a price and if that price reflect the land’s value.  Honestly, I had no idea the Fort Worth Nature Reserve would look anything like what we saw. If I had not known any better, I would have predicted we were hours outside the nearest city.  From the service center to our service destination, the road transformed into a tunnel created by the overhanging trees that lead into a world with less distractions and less manmade noise.  Deer, alligators, fish, and birds all curiously peered at us from their homes while I peered back and wondering why I never knew this place existed.

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