On Becoming Important

Something is important when it has consequences that cannot be ignored.

A stranger is usually seen as unimportant until people learn what he does and conclude that his actions have significant consequences.

If what a person does is not relevant to other people's lives, that person is unimportant to them. At most, he may be important to himself.

A person who does not consider himself important even to himself, yet desperately wants to be important to others, may kill large numbers of people and die in the process simply to become important to them, if only for a moment.

But unimportant people, who are important to themselves can become important to others when they start making friends. Friends share interests, and they are drawn to those with same interests because they can help them learn more and achieve more of what they want.

So an initially unimportant person gradually builds friendships and expands his relationships through mutual interests. Eventually, he becomes important to many people because he provides something they value, and they regard what he does as relevant to their lives.

Building friendships and growing a network is a good way to be taken seriously and listened to. But this specific process of becoming important to wider audiences is often slow.

Another way to become important is to offer people something they need or want while doing it better than anyone else. Such a person becomes important by trading with others and creating wealth. Rich people are important because they not only build businesses but can also influence others through their financial resources. Their wealth demonstrates that they have been capable of producing meaningful results through successful initiatives. For that reason alone, added to their wealth, rich people are often deemed as important.

Some people are not rich, yet they have another way of becoming important. They identify what others are looking for and discover the ideas that make people feel better. They offer those ideas, and people keep coming back for more. They often appeal to people's emotions because, in the realm of ideas, very few people make the effort to determine whether an idea is actually true. These individuals become important by becoming mystical leaders. They master the art of appealing to emotion rather than reason, and people are drawn to them. They gather large crowds and become influential because they can persuade many people to act in a particular way. That has enormous consequences. Mystical leaders with large crowds following them are extremely important.

Here, mysticism is not limited to traditional religion. It is any deliberate appeal to people's emotions so they suspend their own rational judgement.

These influential mystical figures can attract enormous audiences, and they often become wealthy as a result. They may eventually acquire political power and become government leaders capable of directing entire nations or armies.

Another very common way of becoming important is to be really gorgeous. People are attracted to the gorgeous person simply because they have an awesome body. A model can be important to others just because she is pretty. Throughout history pretty women drove powerful man crazy, used their power for their own good, and became extremely important.

There is a fifth way of becoming important, and it is perhaps the most powerful: becoming an artist. It is powerful because artist can express ideas without further explanations.

Artists also appeal to people's emotions, but in a fundamentally different way. Genuine artists express their evaluation of existence through works of art. They offer objects of contemplation. They offer experiences.

Artists have the power to help bring new ideas that will save a decaying world, or the power of destroying it depending on how artist audience responds emotionally to his art. He presents new perspectives that people are not yet seeing, and never knew existed. Response can be in enthusiastic confirmation, contempt, or anger, but the new perspective is now there, in reality, for others to see if they like.

Many artists are completely loyal to who they are and express their own perspectives honestly. People can encounter the artist through his work. This has immense power because, if people love what they find, they become the artist's friends without ever having to meet him. They can also make a lot of money in the process, just by expressing themselves, becoming even more important.

This leads me to conclude that if a person lives in an irrational society and genuinely wants to make an impact, one of the most accelerated paths is to become an artist. One must become a master at expressing one's worldview so that others can see it. Those with kindred spirits will naturally gravitate toward his works of art and, in a sense, become friends. Through art, one may build countless of such friendships without even needing to address them directly.

But some artists do not care about becoming important. They are content simply knowing they expressed what they believed in and made good friends along the way. They find happiness in their art, their friendships, and the interests they pursue. To them, money and fame may be welcome consequences of doing what they love well, but these results are not viewed as measures of their own worth.