What Matters?

What makes something matter? What goes into it? Does an apartment complex burning down matter more than a commercial jet crashing? Does working for a medical device company matter more than working for a toy company?

At least in part, what matters is subjective. I know some people who think that whether the Mets win or not matters. For them I guess it does, but I know that what really matters is whether the Yankees are winning or not. So personal preferences plays a role.

Things that are closer to me tend to matter more too. As sad as a plane crash is that kills a couple hundred people is, my apartment complex burning down matters more to me even though no one was hurt (made up example).

But is there a less subjective way to determine what matters? Removing personal biases from the picture, the plane crash probably matters more. Intuitively that is obvious. But why? What exactly makes it different?

There is the obvious loss of human life that makes the plane crash go up the matter scale. But there is also the fact that the $80 million plane is scrap compared to the $800,000 apartment building. But again, why? Why does human life matter? Why does the value of the property matter?

I think one way of looking at it is what is gone that cannot be gotten back. When someone dies you can't just get them back. And you can't interchangeably replace them with a different person. Also, creating a new person takes a lot of time, resources, and effort. Years of education, food, housing, etc. Beyond that too there is the spiritual value that can't be quantified very well.

The material loss is a bit more straight forward. At least to some extent the dollar figure can be equated to time and effort put into the creation of the destroyed stuff. There is a lot less economic output required to rebuild the apartments than build a new airplane.

But what about building? Creating? Fixing? I think those can be measured in the same way. If you create a nifty tool that makes heart surgery much faster and easier you can save hundreds or maybe thousands of lives. Building a new GI Joe character is productive, but not quite on the same scale.

I got onto this because of my job. Does my job really matter? I mean, it matters to me. I rely on it to provide for my family. That matters. But there are lots of jobs doing a wide range of things that would provide well. Liking your job is of course valuable. That matters. But that is personal preference, important yes, but on a less subjective scale quite unimportant.

I'm still pondering the answers to all that, and maybe I'm overthinking it. But it has been a good think.