Importance
Here is something to think about my fine friends–importance. That is to say, what is important. Not to you, that’s entirely too subjective for me to deal with. And your tastes change so often it’s too hard to keep up with my little minions. No, I’m talking about a more encompassing importance. Let’s say ‘what is important in life’ for the sake of simplification and semantics.
I realize this will be different from person to person, as it is a question I sometimes ask my friends (who then get pissed because I think too much).
Let’s pre-empt and list some of the first things that most people would say. This is a fun game, c’mon. Let’s play a little bit.
1. family. A big one, and one I will agree with to an extent. 2. one’s self. Also important, for without one’s self, there can be no interaction or perception of other things. Again, within a limit this is fine. 3. Money. You might think this is important, but it’s not so much beyond the fact we’ve decided it is needed to live in the world. But money is common and all over. Not to lessen its value–money in itself is a golden power and should be respected. Just not put on a pedestal. 4. work. Conditional–I would say work with core values of empathy, compassion, love, or elements oriented with these are more important than industry, or even science and technology. This is not to say work cannot contain the opposite or alternative elements. Horror often turns us to protection, and so hate and violence can turn us to compassion and understanding.
So what else is important? Raising children so there is a tomorrow, making the world a better place, improving the living conditions of humans worldwide. Agreed? Yes. Well, here is where we run into a bit of a snag. Mostly it’s the ‘how’. How does one change the world for the better? Film is one way, a ready example at the tip of my fingers. So how can my films change the world? Well, I must first identify the problems with the world and seek to remedy them. Another issue: what is a problem to me is a way of life for others. Dilemma. Raising children, the same issue. How I raise my child will be different from how you raise yours, depending on the values we have and the things in life we emphasize.
So then what? We’re lost in a cacophony of personal opinion, taste and preference. How do we decide on what is important? Well, we could all get together and decide what is of universal importance. Yeah, because generalization and conformity have done such wonders for the world. That might even work for a decade or so, but it would all fall apart, just as the methods and systems of education have fall apart since the old times.
Then what do we do? Is there a way to decide what is important? Are there things that are universally important? Maybe, my fine friends. But to discover this we must look at the world with a keen, clear eye. This simple question demands the definition of many other things–the nature of humankind, the purpose of humankind’s existence (“the meaning of life” is something else entirely and a silly question to boot. If you think about it I hope you’ll see what I mean), and the future humankind is aimed toward. Answer those three things and you’ll see what is truly important in life.
Not everyone will find these things, but let’s say they are the forces which move, retract and preserve the underpinnings of the world. It’s good to value and promote family, friends, safety and happiness. But there must be those few who set those things aside to find the other things, the subtle currents that run beneath the world that allow the former things to exist.
There will come a day, as there have many times in the past, that we will be pushed to the brink and the actions of a few people will galvanize many into a force that will propel us into oblivion, or send us to that other place we can never seem to clearly see. If we fail at this, then it is something we have to accept and take responsibility for, not go crying and screaming like a spoilt child into the dark. If we succeed, things will be very, very different. For a time.
Join me next time for more random, tip-of-the-iceberg thoughts.
B.
