A RECENT trip to Bendigo, in central Victoria, got me thinking about values. As always, I enjoyed the architecture: rounded arches and corinthian columns, their acanthus hats drooping rakishly.
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The 19th-century gold town's coffers financed grand neo-classical buildings, with the odd Gothic gargoyle and pointed arch. And illuminating all of it was country light: the kind of crisp, brutal light that European painters once went mad for.
Light is rarely noticed nowadays, perhaps because there is so much of it.
Electricity has allowed us to bounce photons off even the blackest street corners and attic walls. Light-emitting diodes in laptops, plasma televisions, long-life spirals in lamps, and the ever-present street lamp - this is the era of light, most of it born of excited electrons.
Some nights the moon is so bright street lamps are superfluous, but many suburban and city dwellers are oblivious. And the quality of the light is even more unrecognised. Yet even from Melbourne's eastern suburbs to Bendigo, some two hours away, I recognise how the sunlight becomes more vivid in the goldfields town. Bendigo is hardly an agrarian paradise, but with a good breeze, there is noticeably less pollution in the air. The light seems … lighter.
It is this quality of light that painter Arthur Streeton praised in a letter, describing his ''hill of gold'' at Eaglemont in Melbourne's east: ''Yes I sit here in the upper circle surrounded by copper and gold & smile joy under my fly net as all the light, glory & and quivering brightness passes slowly & freely before my eyes.''
Which brings me back to values. What many painters notice, but most of us rarely register, is the distinctive worth of natural light. Light is always valuable, of course, but we take it for granted, particularly when it has been dimmed by glowing tungsten or neon.
Natural light is what's known as a positive externality in economics: something not factored into the calculations, but which is valuable nonetheless.
Likewise for the air. I'm writing from Queenscliff, on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula. Here too is that clearer light. But also clean, salty air: a bit less carbon and a bit more oxygen, regularly refreshed by sea breezes. And even with a population reliant on cars - public transport is sparse and infrequent - there is less automotive smog.
It's a reminder of what we're normally breathing in, even in the green avenues of the suburbs. We live not far from Melbourne's Eastern Freeway, and recently wiped one of our exterior surfaces clean: the thick layers of black on the sponge were a reminder of just how much pollution is pumped into our air every hour. Air pollution is another externality, a negative one: it exacts various costs from the community, but is not part of the price of a car or its fuel.
Debate about the role of externalities in the economy is ongoing. Some argue that pricing the environment, for example, will force businesses and consumers to consume less, and raise revenue for renewable technologies.
Others argue that taxing negative externalities or putting a price on positive externalities will simply add to the expense for consumers, without halting environmental destruction and pollution. Government intervention and cultural change are required because the market is more concerned with short-term economic growth than long-term health of societies and ecosystems.
One point is clear: the value of these externalities cannot simply be reduced to economic values. Of course a price can be put on anything: supply and demand are powerful forces. But it is important to recognise that these are different kinds of value.
Light, as we've seen, is particularly valuable for painters, which helps to realise aesthetic value. But the price of artworks is part of an arcane system of symbolic exchange, which often has nothing to do with aesthetics.
Likewise, natural light is still important to homes: witness real estate catalogues with doctored photos of bright rooms and shining floorboards. But housing costs can have more to do with speculation and tax incentives than with a home's commodious features. The market value is quite different to the value, for families, of specific architecture, geography and climate.
The same argument can be made for education. ''Knowledge and money,'' as Aristotle put it, ''have no common measure.'' Debates about schooling as an ''externality'' continue.
Obviously the market makes these calculations more psychologically straightforward: we are dealing with numbers, not the perhaps intimidating ambiguities of life.
Nonetheless, it is vital to remember that flourishing, human and otherwise, requires many kinds of worth. And sometimes these are in quiet conflict. It pays to recognise, not only the expensive buildings, but also the light we enjoy them by.
■ Dr Damon Young is a philosopher and author. His next book, Philosophy in the Garden, will be published in December 2012. Jack Waterford is on leave.