Importance is Always a Matter of Personal Opinion

1. Dismissing the Idea of Absolute Importance

Alarmists, who are probably right, have been predicting mass extinctions, perhaps even our own extinction, as a result of the disruption to the climate that we humans have caused.

So what? In another hundred million years or so, the earth's ecosystem will probably recover, as it did after the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs, and a new species of intelligent life might (or might not) emerge. Is it conceivable that, in another hundred million years, we human beings will be around to see what happens, even if we manage to avoid doing away without ourselves in the next century? No matter what, in the very distant future the sun will flare up, engulf all the planets, and collapse into a white dwarf.

Who cares?

We human beings care, because it's happening to us and the planet we live on. However, in the grand scheme of things, in our infinite universe, these events are of no importance to anyone else.

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Interestingly, although the word entered English from medieval Latin, classical Latin uses other terms for “important” such as “amplus” and “gravis,” and the verb, “importo,” means “to bring about, cause.” In German, the word is “wichtig” (connected to “Gewicht,” cognate with English “weight,” and semantically similar to “gravis”). French shares “important” with English, and in Hebrew, the only non-Indo-European language I know, the word is “hashuv,” which is related to thinking (hashiva) and calculating (hishuv) and should probably be translated literally as “considered.” The semantic field is well marked out: something important is big, heavy, to be taken into consideration, and, going back to the Latin, having an effect. Important things matter, and matter has weight.

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We want to attribute absolute importance to things that matter to us, but this is an error, since importance is always relative: something can only be important to someone, initially, to oneself. For there to be absolute importance, there would have to be an absolute being, and, given the scale of the universe, that idea boggles the mind. Reports on the findings of astrophysicists have convinced me (I don't presume to speak for anyone else) that the history of the universe extends so far into the past and will reach so far into the future as to defy comprehension. Events of huge magnitude occur in distant galaxies, dwarfing our own solar system, which, itself, is so huge that I, for one, can't get my mind around it. The earth is about 150 million kilometers distant from the sun. This is a relatively short astronomical distance. Moving at 1,000 kilometers per hour, more or less the speed of a commercial jetliner, it would take 150,000 hours to reach the sun. That is 6,250 days, a little more than seventeen years.

Given the size of the universe, according to current cosmological knowledge, I don't think it's possible to conceive of a supreme being that could be aware of everything happening in the universe that it created, and that cares about what happens in it. Hence, importance cannot be absolute, and, in the absence of the criterion of absolute importance, there is no way of persuading a person who doesn't think something is important that it really is. If someone says, “It doesn't matter whether I live or die,” an issue which, for most people, is of cardinal importance, nothing anyone can say to that person can change his or her mind. What matters to me may not matter to anyone else.

Conversely, I must concede that it is impossible to persuade someone who does believe in an infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, divine being, to whom everything in the universe is of absolute importance, that he or she is mistaken. I think the absurdity of the idea is persuasive, but that's only my opinion.

Religion is obviously the locus of belief in absolute importance, where people experience the greatest metaphysical discomfort if they are constrained to admit that there is no such thing, for religions are based on the conviction that importance is absolute. Holy places are intrinsically and eternally holy. Taking communion, performing circumcision, eating only foods permitted by dietary laws, going on a pilgrimage to Mecca – these are not seen as actions of importance only to the people who perform them. Otherwise, it would be a matter of indifference whether or not one did them. Mecca's all booked up this year, I think I'll go to Las Vegas.

If you don't believe in their significance, many religious scruples sound silly. For example, if a Jewish woman lights Sabbath candles a certain number of minutes before sunset on Friday night, according to Jewish law she is performing a commandment. If she lights candles the same number of minutes after sunset on Friday evening, she is committing a grave sin. In the same vein, how could it be that sprinkling a bit of water on an infant or immersing it, in certain contexts, can make a difference regarding the eternal fate of its soul, whereas giving a baby a bath is only of hygienic importance? Why is marching down the street and whipping oneself until one bleeds in certain places, on a certain date in the Muslim calendar, a sign of Shiite piety, whereas no one, not even a devout Shiite Muslim, would think of doing something like that on the Champs Elysées on some random date? These things are important only to the people who believe they are and often incomprehensible to non-believers.

2. What We Think is Important

Importance is a personal matter, but people live in societies, societies seek to determine what is important for their members, and their members are usually persuaded. Traditional societies do so on a relatively small scale, personally, and by means of ceremonies and ceremonial sites. Post-traditional societies do so both by those means and the mass media. Every day the newspaper (which I have chosen because, more or less, it reflects my values and opinions) arrives at my front door and informs me about things that are deemed important by the editorial staff, whose idea of what is important is largely in keeping with the general consensus in the media and the ideological orientation of that particular newspaper . But why do I have to know about an earthquake in Indonesia or whether or not Bob Dylan accepted the Nobel Prize in person (or that he won the Nobel Prize at all)? I have friends who never read the paper or watch the news on television. Their ignorance of current events probably does not detract from the quality of their life. On the contrary, it does little good to me to know most of the things that are printed in the paper, assuming they are correct, which is often not the case. Nevertheless, reading the paper is important to me, because awareness of current events is something I share with people I feel solidarity with.

Other institutions, such as university departments, also try to rule on what is important, for their students and the communities who care about their fields. Although I have a doctorate in Comparative Literature and have studied German, I have never gotten around to reading Goethe's Faust, which, I know, is held to be a very important work. I concede that I would be enriched if I read Faust, especially if I read it in German (I even own a copy), but I don't plan to do so now or in the foreseeable future. I do feel mildly guilty about this lacuna in my literary culture, because I like to think of myself as a cultivated man (the kind of man who has read and understood Faust), and I want other people to think of me that way. But my own self-criticism and the hypothetical disdain of my peers is not important enough for me. I will probably die without having had that important literary experience, as well as many other experiences of potential importance to me, literary and other. Will I ever get to Beijing or Tierra del Fuego?

Despite my failure to read Faust, literature is important to me, and I belong to a community that believes in the importance of literature, because it influences people, challenges them, and enhances their lives. However, that community of literati, which might once have been called the Republic of Letters, is far from universal. For most American men, the outcome of the Superbowl is of greater importance than any novel, and men in most other places in the world care as little for American football as they do for novels, whereas victory in the soccer World Cup is of vital importance to them. It's not up to me personally to persuade soccer fans to read novels, though I believe the world would be a better place if people were more interested in literature than in professional sports. This matter is only of importance to me because I'd like to live in what I think of as a better world, though I acknowledge that my vision of a better world is not universally shared.

Our experiences proverbially instruct us as to what is truly important to us and, we believe, by extension to all humanity. Coping with cancer makes one revise one's priorities, and even a minor illness can be a sobering experience. I underwent some very minor surgery recently. Visiting a hospital and seeing the names of all the departments – orthopedics, cardiology, oncology, urology, ophthalmology, nephrology – I began to think about the parts of my body that eventually will go bad on me, and I valued my reasonably good health all the more. I also had greater appreciation of the knowledge and skill underpinning all of these hospital departments. Clearly it is very important to have well-equipped hospitals available, with expert physicians, nurses, and technical staff – immediately important to anyone who is ill, but one needn't be an extreme altruist to generalize about that importance. Everyone might have to be treated some time, we are all related to people who might need medical care, and, as a citizens, we benefit from having good hospitals in our city. However, we do not generalize down from the universal principle that health care is important. We generalize up from the importance of health care to us personally and to the people we care about.

The medical example is a clear demonstration of another kind of importance, that of precise attention to detail, even when no one's life depends on it. In my own work as a translator, I have spent many minutes puzzling over the correct way to render a word or to form a sentence, consulting dictionaries and web sites and revising my choice time and time again. I know that most readers would hardly notice the matters I agonize over, but it's a matter of pride to me to do the job right – or as close to right as I can. Musicians fret over phrasing that most listeners are oblivious to. Painters worry about the colors they choose. Chefs aim to get the seasoning perfect. No one thinks that these things matter as much as, say, making sure a nuclear reactor can withstand earthquakes and tidal waves. But they do matter to the people involved.

Among orthodox Jews, certain people flaunt their piety by claiming to observe minor commandments as scrupulously as major ones, which is to say that they deny the distinction between major and minor commandments. This is because obedience to Jewish law is of absolute importance to them. However, the very idea of praising people for observing minor commandments as scrupulously as major ones implies recognition of the difference between them, and, ordinary people always draw distinctions and set priorities. Exceeding the speed limit by a bit obviously isn't as serious an infraction as driving a stolen car without a license or insurance while under the influence of alcohol.

Priorities that one doesn't share can often look grotesquely inappropriate, as, when, at the end of Proust's Le côté de Guermantes, Swann tells the Duke and Duchess that he is mortally ill and about to die. The noble couple are late to a dinner engagement, and the Duchess is out of her depth. As Proust says: “Placed for the first time in her life between two such different duties as entering her carriage to go to a dinner in town and showing pity for a man who was about to die, she saw nothing in the code of conventions that would indicate which jurisprudence to follow.” (p. 594 of the Pléidae edition, my translation). Her husband, however, has no doubt about his priorities. He is impatient to leave for the dinner party and rushes his wife along. However, when he notices she is wearing black shoes with a red dress, he tells her she must change them. Suddenly there's no rush.

Belief systems determine what is important to the people who adhere to them, but it may not matter to them whether their beliefs are shared. I have met Buddhists who firmly believe that their souls once inhabited other bodies and will inhabit many more after their present body dies, a belief I don't share by a long shot. Because of the nature of Buddhism, my disbelief is a matter of indifference to my Buddhist acquaintances. They know, as it were, that, whether I believe it or not, my soul will transmigrate. By contrast, by my Jewish birth, my secular education, and my considered conviction, I am not a Christian. I can't come close to understanding the concept of “the son of God.” Moreover, in my view the myth of the virgin birth is, although imaginable, preposterous. As for the idea that Jesus died to redeem people's souls, I don't see how that's supposed to work.

Because of the nature of Christianity, I know that my incredulity is offensive and challenging to many Christians, and, as far as they're concerned, I will burn in hell for all eternity if I'm not converted. Since they love me, as a fellow human, they believe it is their mission to persuade me that they're right. They wouldn't be committed to converting the heathen if they thought their religion was important only to themselves, because they happened to have been brought up to believe in it, and that it was rightly indifferent to non-Christians (except, perhaps, as a matter of curiosity, or, for the historically aware, as a force that shaped human history and continues to do so). If they allowed themselves to entertain that thought, their belief system would collapse. For Christians, their religion must be absolutely true. Otherwise it means nothing. It can't be just an opinion. Saying that Mother Theresa was a selfless woman who helped a lot of sick and destitute people, a statement that can be verified, modified, or refuted, is not at all the same as saying that she was a saint. (Interestingly, because of our particularism, we Jews, if we are believers, only believe that our religion is absolutely binding upon other Jews, and we don't expect non-Jews to believe in it.)

Thus the idea that nothing is of absolute importance is extremely threatening to people like evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews, and fundamentalist Muslims, who are committed to a certain belief system. But I'm not at all threatened by the idea. I don't see why we need to believe in the absolute, intrinsic importance of events on our tiny planet. The danger that hundreds of millions of people might die because of rising sea levels, famines, wars over resources, and the spread of diseases is very important to me, whether or not my own grandchildren will be among the victims, because I care about the world and the people in it. They are important to me because I feel solidarity: I care about myself, about people I know and love, about the human beings who live around me, and so on, until, as much as I can, I extend my concern to all humanity, or, if I were enlightened, to all sentient beings. If there are other sentient beings out there in the universe, the hypothetical sharing of sentience would make them important to an enlightened person, who would be sorry to learn that their planet was annihilated in a supernova.

Ordinary, unenlightened people like me tend to care most about sentient beings that are close at hand, or ones they can identify with. When elephants and giraffes are threatened with extinction, we respond with sympathy. If mosquitoes were threatened with extinction, unless someone explained to me why we need them desperately in our ecosystem, I wouldn't bat an eyelash. But, absolutely speaking, are mosquitoes less important than giraffes? Of course not. But, then again, maybe we aren't capable of thinking in absolute terms. We can only think parochially, though we may delude ourselves that we are thinking absolutely. Things do matter to us, personally, if we're engaged in life, and mattering to us personally is probably the best and most we can do.

3. What we Think is Important is a Function of What we Believe, and Belief is a Major Component of our Identity

One can infer what is important to someone, either another person or oneself, by examining that person's actions, though people frequently profess a belief, violate their own principles, and, possibly, feel remorseful. I eat the meat of animals that have probably been kept in dreadful conditions and slaughtered cruelly. I claim to believe that it is immoral to mistreat animals (I don't do so directly myself), and I am aware that raising animals for slaughter is damaging to the environment and contributes to global warming. However, the fact is, my behavior tells me that the pleasure I get from eating meat is more important to me than loyalty to my abstract principles. At best this is a confession of weakness. At worst, a confession of hypocrisy.

Despite my weakness, I can't imagine myself doing certain things that are not only out of character (I was never tempted to get a tattoo or pierce my ear and wear an earring), but also abhorrent to me morally (like raping a woman or seducing a little boy). I also can't imagine crossing myself in a church, prostrating myself in a mosque, or burning incense in a Buddhist temple.

Looking at the above examples, I see four categories of action in relation to belief, all connected both to the matter of importance and to that of identity. The first category is what the Catholics call “venial”: sins that, if you commit them, won't send you to eternal damnation. Almost everyone, I imagine, has a list of minor failings, things they think of as mainly wrong, but which, in fact are neutral, unimportant to them, such as betting on horse races, smoking cigars, not calling it to the cashier's attention if she makes a small mistake in their favor, and so on. We have rationalizations for committing these minor sins: the chicken I'm eating was dead anyway; Microsoft is so rich, it doesn't matter if I use an unlicensed version of Windows; everyone cheats on income tax a little – not reporting a couple of hundred dollars that you got in cash isn't the same as concealing millions of ill-gotten gains in a numbered bank account. While I concede that people disagree as to what is minor and what is major – militant vegetarians see the slaughter and butchering of animals as tantamount to murder – this doesn't do away with the distinction people make in judging themselves and others between very bad deeds and minor vices.

The second category is, in fact, morally neutral. I regard certain things as wrong for me, because they don't fit into my self-image, but I understand that they fit other people perfectly. I would never buy and wear an expensive wristwatch, though I bought and play an expensive flute.

The third category is morally significant. For example, I can hardly think of a rationalization for killing or injuring someone, for extortion, or for fraud – among other major crimes. A gangster or tyrant who commits such actions obviously must rationalize them and persuade himself that they conform to social norms of some kind. Moreover, most ordinary people can persuade themselves or be persuaded that even actions of this kind are moral in certain circumstances such as war. I have been a soldier during a war, and I was on the team of a self-propelled howitzer that fired shells at distant enemy troops. I have no idea whether the shells that we fired killed anyone, but I have to admit that I don't feel guilty about it. The Syrian soldiers I shot at would have been happy to shoot at me.

Aside from the exception I mentioned, most of us do not believe that condemning violent and cruel crimes is a matter of opinion, and we do believe that it is important to live in a society in which such crimes are rare. Moreover, I also think that, while acknowledging that my own moral values are not universally held, I do have grounds for condemning societies where slavery is practiced or where people can be sent to prison or executed for expressing opposition to their government. Nevertheless, no matter how widely they are shared, ethical norms cannot be absolute.

The final group of examples shows most clearly the connection between the attribution of importance, belief, and identity. As a Jew, it is important for me not to participate in a Catholic mass or to prostrate myself in Muslim prayer. This is because I don't believe in the tenets of those other religions, and because of who I am. For me to convert to Catholicism or Islam would be an extreme transformation of my identity. My own identity, my idea of whom I am, is important to me, and the values I regard as important are among the factors that compose my identity.

Taking “identity” in a somewhat loose way, we have overlapping identities – people talk about intersectionality today – various predicates related to types of people that can applied to us: gender, age, ethnicity, mother-tongue, and so on. We also have professional identities (soldier, politician, care-giver), and identities related to our avocations and interests (art collectors, gun enthusiasts, fans of Steven King). Some of these identities are givens, and others are subject to choice and variable emphasis. When we accept an aspect of our identity and act upon it, we can be said to be identifying. Everyone in America is of some national extraction or another, something they can't change, but they might well be uninterested in their ethnic background. A man might own a rifle and go hunting now and then, but not be a member of the NRA or a fanatic advocate of the right to own a gun. Sometimes identity is pinned on a person as with Robert Klein, the gentile character played by Alain Delon in the 1976 film by Joseph Losey, who is arrested and deported by the Nazis as a Jew, because of his name. And sometimes identity can be evaded or repudiated, as with Coleman Silk, the protagonist of Philip Roth's The Human Stain, who conceals his African-American ancestry. Conversely, one can embrace an identity that is not exactly one's own, the way Barack Obama chose to be “black,” although he was not descended from African slaves in the United States, like most African-Americans.

The issue of identity and identification is closely related to the subject of what one thinks is important, a matter of choice. An Italian-American whose extraction was centrally important in her life might study Italian, travel in Italy, learn to cook Italian food, make contact with distant relatives still in Italy, and be a devout Roman Catholic, but she would have no convincing argument against her sister, who might be more interested in Chinese culture than Italian, more inclined to Buddhism than to Christianity, and indifferent to her distant Italian cousins. One sister feels solidarity with Italian people, and the other doesn't. If importance were absolute, one sister would be wrong, and the other would be right – and they probably would hate each other.

 Belief in absolute importance is often an obstacle to compassion, understanding, tolerance, and human solidarity, values that many of us believe to be of absolute importance. Paradoxically, the best way of fostering those values is to acknowledge that they are not of absolute importance.