The Significance of Insignificance

``Mention this to me, mention something, mention anything and watch the weather change'' — from the Tool song `Disposition'

In an earlier post, I mentioned that a person's belief in something changes with time. A person's idea about something is influenced heavily by what he/she experiences and/or observes, how ever evanescent it may (appear to an observer to) be.

Is this why we often use quotations to get our point across? Is this why optimism is such a good thing? Is this why, sometimes, we get angry so easily? Is this why laugh so easily? Is this why ``perfection'' is considered so important? Does this not seem very similar to the butterfly effect?

Thinking of this in a different way, the apparent insignificance of something makes us think ``it'' not being there or ``it'' happening (if ``it'' is an event) would not have made a difference. However, a plethora of other things are there are because of ``it''. Ofttimes, it is very hard to acknowledge the importance of ``it'', unless we see something tangible that comes as a explicitly direct consequence of ``it''.

Of course, what is explicitly direct for one person is not so for another. What is tangible to one person is abstract to another. This is probably because the sets of ``it''s the persons in question have come across are different. Thus, what is meaningless to me maybe most profound thing to you.

``What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another'' — David Herbert Lawrence

The influence of the seemingly trivial changes our perception. It changes the context in which we see other things, some of which may again seem to be trivial. The second set of things act similarly and influence the third set of things, and so on. Perhaps this is why everyone is unique. Perhaps this is why history is so important. Perhaps this is why all of us are so similar and yet so different.