What is important? The importance of something relies on a series of different things. These things include a person's knowledge, the circumstances, value, and the significance of that thing. Well first you have to think, what does important mean? The definition of important according Encarta Dictionary is having value or significance: worthy of note or consideration, especially for its interest, value, or relevance. There are many things that come to mind when you think of importance. The bare necessities of life are important. Water, food, and oxygen are important. The thing is you have to look beyond that. You have to look at how something and figure out how it will affect you, those around and you, and those connected to it. So the question is what exactly is important?
One of the main things that influence whether or not something is important is the way you view something. Your opinion affects what you do every day. Opinions in general are important, everyone has one. In certain trades or business, top spokespersons, or executives only care about opinions. The whole reason for ad campaigns is to swerve people's opinion to like a certain thing. An opinion is a personal view or take on an issue. Many obstacles that you come across in life will require an opinion. Different experiences in your everyday life shape your opinion. This is why people have different priorities, because they think different things are important.
Out of all the elements that decide if something is important or not is the knowledge a person holds. You make the best decisions when you know all the facts. Deciding that is important needs knowledge. For instance, in Egypt something that was very important to the Egyptians was magic and the afterlife. To the best of the Egyptians' knowledge they believed that after death their heart would be weighed and if it was heavy they would not go to the afterlife (Ancient Egyptian Religion). Their knowledge of the afterlife led them to deciding that living a rich life and not having a heavy heart at death is important.
Most of the time when you view someone's life for just a couple of minutes you can tell what is important to them. The circumstances surrounding our world influence just about everything. Archaeologists and historians could tell that the afterlife was important to ancient Egyptians by studying the Egyptians and their practices. The pyramids are something that comes to mind for anyone when thinking about Egypt. For instance, The Pyramids at Giza is called the mortuary city. The afterlife is clearly important because they built monuments surrounding it. The Egyptians felt that although their life on earth was important their afterlife had a higher significance. Another thing that they found important was magic. For ancient Egyptians, when anything went wrong they would visit magicians, or priests, charmers, or protection-makers were visited. For instance, if an Egyptian was having a lot of things go wrong in their life, they would blame it on a ghost or deity thus causing them to go to a wise woman. (Pinch, Geraldine) The circumstances surrounding anything prove its importance. The Egyptians felt the afterlife and magic was important so they would make their every day decisions from that.
There are about 6.6 billion people in the world. So many people die and so many people are born every day. Every single one of those people need things that will keep them alive for as long as possible. These things are what one would call, important. Water, food or nutrients, and air are all necessities of life. Without these mankind would be dead. In regions of the world, such as Africa, men, women, and children die avoidable deaths because they lack the necessities to life. In other cases things that are lacking are basic health care. In Haiti, an already poor country, there was an earthquake. The health care system in Haiti is not all that great and when the number of injured and dyingpeople grew, hospitals were bombarded with victims. If this was the case in a country like America the number of deaths would not be as high because we have a greater amount of hospitals. The fatalities in Haiti would not be higher if the total if they had a better health care system with things such as vaccines, badnages, wraps, and creams. If they had more personnel such as doctors and nurses, the doctors and nurses there would not be as stressed and do their work better. Also the ration of patients to doctor or nurse would not be as high. In this case the important thing for Haiti would be supplies. The gathering of more supplise has already been cosidered, the value of the supplies is very prominent, abd bears a great importance to the victims of the Haitian earthquake. This is they way you should look at things when trying to presume whether or not something has importance.
In history class there are thing s that you learn about several times from year to year. Sometimes you cannot help but wonder why you are getting taught something over and over again. Instances of these are The Revolution, World War 2, the Egyptians, and slavery. These events and events like these are what those who come up with curriculum for students find important. Have you ever just wondered why in elementary school you did not learn about the war of 1812, or the hostilities between Asian and Japan, or even the French and Indian war? These different subjects are more important to the countries they are based in because they affect their culture more. The Revoultion, Ancient Egypt, and slavery are occurences in history that have impacted the world as we know it today, the most. Mankind has learned from it smistakes that it has made in the pst. We have grown from what we have seen, done, and learned. There are important moments in history that have shaped mankind to be the way are today. The Revolutionary War is can be described as exactly it is called, revoultionary. This is an important subject because of its large significance and relevance. When something is revoltionary it is so new and different it causes a maj0r change. The major change was America breaking free from England. America is now one of the richest countries in the world, has a high immigration rate, and it helps many other countries.
To figure out if something is important there is a simple test you can use. Ask if it is relevant, valuable, or worthwhile. We all posses the power of deciding anything's importance. Ancienct man figured out the importance of things pterry easily and we use "the importance of something" every day when making decisions.
citation: "Ancient Egyptian Religion." Wikipedia. 4 February 2010. Wikipedia, Web. 4 Feb 2010.
Pinch, Geraldine. "Ancient Egyptian Magic." BBC 5 November 2009: n. pag. Web. 4 Feb 2010.
"Emblem-Important." commons wikiemedia. Web. 5 Feb 2010.
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