Blog admin still not functioning properly, but I have nothing better to do…just waiting for the next chemo session and PET-scan.
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I frequently think about—and perhaps mention too often in my writing—the significance of context in how we perceive the world around us and the way it affects us. Context is especially influential when we form judgments about the importance of specific circumstances or events. When those situations have particularly positive or negative effects on ourselves or others in our familial or social circles, we tend to judge them more important than were they impactful to others. UNLESS their impacts have equally powerful influences on our own circles as well as the broader public. A tornado that destroys the home in which one lives is viewed as more important than one that wrecks a neighborhood in a town two states away. But if that tornado damages our home and destroys dozens of homes within a tight radius of ours, we tend to view the devastation as equally important…or nearly so. A death in the family is considered more important than the death of a famous actor. But the death of the leader of one’s country is viewed as extremely important for the wider society. Yet the death of the president of a different, smaller, or lesser-known country may be concerning, but not especially important to one’s own world experience. None of this is news, of course, but thinking about the extent to which context matters fascinates me. Winning a multi-million-dollar lottery at a time in one’s life when one expects to live for 40 more years is apt to be viewed as far more important than winning the same sum after being given a terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in the immediate near-term. Context makes an enormous difference.
