As with everyone over the festive season, I spent a lot of time visiting with my family and old friends and it goes with saying that I had wonderful time. Catching up with what they all have been up is not only interesting but somehow an important part of the yearly tradition. And talking about what is important, what is important seems to have become somewhat blurred in modern times.  In a conversation with one of my nieces, she asked; "how many followers I had on Steemit?".  "I don't really know, it´s not important". I replied  My niece was rather shocked at this and then eagerly told me that she had over 5000 followers on twitter and regularly got hundreds of "likes" on her Facebook posts. This, in her mind, made her "important". When I asked "why?", her logic was that; the more followers you had, the more people listened to your opinion and therefore your opinion had more value. "So what you consider as important is to do with the numbers then?" I asked. "Of course" She replied. "I see. So then those who have only a few "followers" are less important. And continuing on that logic, that would also mean that famous people are more important than non-famous people?" I asked. To my utter surprise she totally agreed.  I was more than a little disappointed. "That is strange because some of the most important lessons and advice I have had in my life have come from people whom you would consider as being unknown who had no followers at all". I responded

 Over the last 25 years I have seen this growing trend in how numbers have taken control over how we perceive importance. I could not foresee how this trend would play out over time, but my gut instinct told me it was not good and possibly dangerous to society as a whole. In a world governed by numbers there are only two numbers that count. The first is the number ONE and the second is the largest number you personally perceive as being "important".
You are important if you are; the No1 richest person in the world, the No1 sports person or No1 on the famous celebrity "A" list. And so on.

 A tragedy, an accident or disaster, is deemed as being more "news worthy" the higher the number of deaths involved. In the 1990s there was a train crash in London due to the rail tracks being made of low quality.
The sub-headline in one newspaper said; "It could have been far worse, but luckily there were only 20 deaths" - "Only" 20 deaths.  

At the time it seemed to me that only I was bothered about this. I wrote a letter to the newspaper reminding them that those "only 20 people" all had mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, as well as friends, who would all be attending a heartbreaking funeral and have to live with their loss for the rest of their lives. No doubt the reason I did not get a reply was because I was deemed as not important. I was not famous, rich or royal, thus my opinion did not matter. Not getting a reply was not particularly important to me, but what was important was that I listened to my conscience and acted upon it  The fact that the train crash happened at all was also as a result of the deadly "importance of numbers" virus. In a numbers world the most important numbers will always be related to money. When UK railway service was put out to tender by the British government (underThatcher), the public were told that privatisation would reduce the price of a ticket as well as improve customer service. Sadly, time has shown that the very opposite happened.

22 years later it is now more expensive than ever to travel and the quality get lower each year. Such as the railway tracks. The train de-railed that day because the old tracks had been replaced by ones of a much lower quality. Why? Because the numbers demanded it. In particular the numbers related to profits. Profits demanded that the old worn out railway tracks be replaced with the cheapest rather than most reliable. The lower quality caused them to buckle under the weight of the train causing the deaths of "only" 20 non-important people.
 


As a result of this, I began protesting on the streets of my local town warning of putting "profit over people" decades before it as used as trendy phrase. Time has shown that my voiced concerns made no difference at all.
I guess I was deemed as being "not important".  

 The "importance of numbers“ virus struck again 22 years later in June 2017 with horrific consequences. 

A tower block in London went up in flames so fast that 71 non-important people were burnt alive. As the gruesome details came out it was revealed that the outer panels and balconies were made of flammable material.


The tower block had recently been refurbished and the building contractors used a cheaper material over a more expensive one. I suppose it was important to them to make a profit. The other thing that was important was that the material passed Government fire safety regulations. However, does anyone believe for a second that, if the residents of Grenfell tower were rich or famous, that cheaper material would have been used?
Immediately after the disaster residents of the area began demanding justice. But deep down we all know that their protest will be forgotten and wash away like tears in the rain.  
They poor and the poor are not important, right?

So what exactly is important and who gets to decide what is? 

 Back in 1990s I began to fear that defining "what is important" by the numbers, could be potentially dangerous to society. It could gradually erode moral values to a point where the value of human life itself might be viewed as either a commodity or a liability.
In the cold ruthless eyes of business, the poor, the unemployed, the old and the sick are a liability. They do not contribute to God of profit and so are "unimportant". At least to the business machine. Sadly the recent hospital crises in the UK highlights this dilemma very well. Hospital staff are over-whelmed, over worked, over tired and under-paid. The UK Government health minister, Jeremy Hunt, sat in a TV interview telling of how proud Britain was of its health service while at the same time doctors and nurses were phoning radio stations in desperation telling that they did not know how they could possibly carry on.

               
If the so called civilised western world really viewed human beings as more important than money then the hospitals and the care-homes would be given the highest financial priority. The truth is the health service is now run like a business, and as with all businesses, the goal is to make a profit.  In America prisons are now run by private organisations. Can anyone honestly tell be for that there is no incentive to make the prisons profitable?  

 In 2008 the world learned with devastating consequences what happens when banks, insurance companies and corporations, view making a profit more important than doing their duty. The business of banks is to make money, I understand that, but when was it decided that, making money by using lies, deceit and corruption, was more important than keeping your conscience clean?

My father was an accountant. One night I woke up during the early hours and got up to get a glass of milk. I saw the light on in my fathers office and went in. He was still up working on the yearly accounts for the firm he worked for. In those days there were no computers and was using one of those old adding machines.

He told me of that the numbers in the accounts were a holy thing. He was allowed to try and make the numbers work better so that the company paid less tax, but at the end of the day, the accounts had to be truthful. In the1960s & 70s, the period my father worked, accountants were the holy grail of truth. Share prices were trusted because everyone believe that the account books were balanced honestly. However, somewhere along the way the accountants began to become corrupted by their CEOs. If they could manipulate the books to make the company look more valuable than it really was then they would receive a sports cars holiday home or huge salary bins etc.

Suddenly stock-market share prices could no longer be trusted with the result being that they became dangerously over inflated. This was one of the main reasons that lead to the downfall of the Lehman Brothers. When it was revealed that Lehman Brothers had billions of toxic assets that had been hidden, its share price plummeted at free-fall speed. Making a profit for its shareholders had become the most important thing. As we all know, Lehman Brothers were just the tip if the iceberg.


Eventually it was revealed that the entire financial industry was knee deep in corruption. Gradually, morals and honour have been deemed of having no importance in the financial world. Even after the devastation the financial crash caused world wide I believe that this still has not changed today. Apart from the loss of jobs and loss of homes, it is estimated that over 4 million people died from as a direct result of the financial crises.  

It appears that mankind has made greed more important than need.
But it is all of mankind? 

Deep down we all know what is important. Morals, (what is right and wrong) are built into our very DNA. Even genetic scientists now admit this even though they have no explanation why. I would hazard a guess and say that; family, friends, health and peace would be top of the list of most people. But seeing as though I have been highlighting the importance of numbers, I suppose you might be curious to know what is officially viewed as being the No1 most important thing in life. Well surely I don't have to tell you because we all know very well that it is LOVE is. Without love, life would be meaningless. It would be merely existence for existence sake.

The only human beings who do not have an in-built moral code and do not value love, are psychopaths. For some unknown reason these cold hearted calculating creatures are born without a conscience or empathy. And regarding love, psychopaths are simply incapable of it.  
In a recent study made by Dr Robert Hare (the world´s leading expert on psychopathy) he stated; "as high as 7 out of 10 people who worked in banks, corporations and on stock-market, score very high on the psychopathy scale"
This study lead to a new term know as "corporate psychopaths". Considering that psychopaths have no sense of right or wrong, have no honor or conscience, then perhaps it is not too surprising why the financial world has become so corrupt. Dr Hare stated that; "Money, power and self gratification, are the most important thing to the psychopath." Therefore it does not take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce why they are attracted to the finical world.  

 

The problem is, when you then decide to make the railway service, the prisons, the hospitals and the care-homes for the elderly, into a business, then the "corporate psychopath" type will also be attracted to management positions in the "care-business" industry. All of a sudden we have someone who has no conscience and no empathy in charge of an area where having a conscience and empathy is of the highest importance. Without a conscience to guide us in doing the morally right thing, and without empathy towards our fellow human-beings, we would all just lie to each-other, swindle each other and perhaps wipe each other out. Without there being enough honest people around, dishonest people simply could not exist. If everyone were dishonest who could we trust? Who would to do their job correctly? The world would simply fall apart and stop.  

 It is clear that the UK, and other European countries are in as crises of understanding; "what is important".  
So is America.
I like to believe that most Americans are decent hard working folk and, on the whole, try to do the right thing. Therefore it is somewhat of a mystery how a man, who appears to lie incessantly, have very little moral standards, and is so obviously narcissistic, ever become America´s most important citizen?
Something is wrong here. 

When I was 14 I told a lie to my grandmother. She found out. 

She took me to one side and said this; "Arthur, when you tell just one single lie, how do I know that the next thing you say is not a lie? Am I supposed to guess which is the truth and which is a lie? Do you understand why it is important to tell the truth?"
I never forgot that lesson. With that in mind, can anyone honestly tell me that they believe a single word any politician says in these modern times? And yet we have all been partly responsible for putting them into positions where we all agree that it is "important" that they are honest and do the right thing.  

Earlier I started that the No1 most important thing in life is love. But in order to love and to be loved back, there has to be trust. And trust can only exist if both parties agree that honesty and respect is important. And honesty and respect can only exist if we have a conscience. Therefore, in my humble opinion, I believe that having a clean conscience is the most important thing in life.
I once had a friend who would visit terminally ill people in hospital. One day I met him returning from the hospital and I asked him how many terminally ill patients he had visited in life. "Oh about 3000." He said. He went on to tell that, over the years, he had started to see a pattern. Those who had a clear conscience tended to have no fear of dying, whereas those who had hurt people; stole, cheated or swindled others, tended to die a fearful fretful death. Even those who were atheists. It was not fear of death that tortured them, but their conscience.  

 A psychiatrist friend of mine once told me; "It is virtually impossible to destroy the human conscience. When we are young we can lie and cheat easily because our body and mind are strong. We can suppress the conscience with little effort. But as we get older we gradually lose this youthful strength and the lying and cheating comes back with a vengeance. Our conscience never forgets and the body and the mind starts pays the price with illnesses either physical or mental".  
I don't know about you, but I would rather leave this earth peacefully and without fear. 

Psychopaths of course have no conscience to bother them. They have no fear either so to them it makes no difference. The psychopath simply sniggers at death. Looking at it from that standpoint it sounds rather advantageous to be a psychopath. However, all that sniggers is not gold. You may or may not know that psychopaths are extremely jealous of "normal people". They are jealous because normal people have "real" feelings and these "real" feelings enable us to experience love, joy and forms of happiness. As well as great sadness and despair.
 

The psychopath knows full well that they can never experience any of these things and it bothers them.  They see a group of friends laughing together in a bar and the wonder what the hell is so funny? They see couples who are "in love" embrace each other and wonder what the hell is so special? They see people crying at funerals and wonder what all the fuss is about? - after all it is just a dead body. The psychopath does not have the capability to feel deeply about anything and as such one could say they are not really alive. One could argue that they are a kind of living dead. I don't know about you but I place high importance on having feelings. For without feeling there is no meaning.  

So if you are in the least confused about what is important, just listen to your conscience.
Look to your feelings and not to the numbers.
Numbers have value and are good for measuring things but numbers should not be used for measuring the value of a persons life.
What is important is to be true to yourself as well as to others.

Thank you for visiting my blog and I hope you got something from it.
I wish you a warn welcome back in advance. @arthuradamson