What defines importance?
This post is part of Agora Road's April 2024 Travelogue.
So earlier today I was sorting the document in my bedroom. I did not throw away anything but, I was faced with a choice. You see, my bedroom as a mold problem and an insect problem to a lesser extent. There are locations in my bedroom which are imperious to both of those things, but the safe places are limited; I could not store all my documents in there.
So I thought to myself: Well, I will just safeguard the important ones and leave the other in the unsafe place.
As I categorized the documents into "important" and "non-important", a thought came to my mind. What defines importance exactly? My mind was able to determine which files were important, but I was unsure what my exact logic behind it was.
Wikipedia's article on importance states that "Importance is a property of entities that matter or make a difference." This sounds like a fine definition in a vacuum, but upon further inspection it seems inadequate for documents. That art project I made in high school will probably not "make a difference". What defines "this thing matter" anyway?
I am in the opinion that that importance is not a property of a given subject, but rather an assigned meaning done by an individual. As they say, one man trash is another man's treasure.
That being said, I suppose it is possible that all humans operate on the same logic to judge what is important.
Anyway, here are all the things I flagged as important:
- Art projects
- Lists of people
- Agendas from high school
- Files with interesting information
- Files that give contextual info for an event
The following was not considered important:
- Most high school science exercises
- Most high school english exercises
- Most high school math exercises
At first glance the answer seems something along the line of "That which is part of your past and has the possibility to alter the future is important". However the mathematical exercises are technically part of my past, yet I do not regard them as important by any stretch of the imagination.
I suspect it has something to do "uniqueness". I figure I don't consider a sheet with math formulas on it to be important because I know they exist in the "artificial context" that is a random math exercise I did in high school. I suspect that if the sheet were part of a construction or art project, it would be considered important.
Yeah, I think what the non-important objects have in common is that they were mass-printed for students. It's not about the lack of scarcity per se, but rather the lack of direct connection in my life.
I think there is a "power" aspect to it too. Most people consider having money to be important. In general, a physical money cert was mass printed by the government and has absolutely nothing to do with your life (aside for you owning it). So why do we keep money? Well, the answer is obvious, because it gives us the power to buy stuff.
So as the writing of this, I believe that what determines importance is as follows: "That which you believe to have a link to your unique existence and what you recognize as a potential source of power is what you consider important".
Written by manpaint on 09 April 2024.