Upon reading the journal entries I have gotten back today, I noticed a particular interest in one phrase I used by Professor Drabik.  My phrase was “humankind as a whole has no significance” and the response to this phrase was “Are you sure?”  This entry dates back to our fourth class, we were discussing the poems “Man Listening to Disc” and “The Weary Blues.”  I believe during this class we entered into one of the most heated debates about the significance of man.  Many believing that we do in all ways have much significance however my point is that in a cosmic scale we do not.  Even on a more global scale, the history of the conquered is always lost to those that conquer.  One specific example was the burning of the libraries at Alexandria, which set back medical science and research centuries of work.  The significance of those that published and researched for the good of all of mankind was lost because their only legacy left to the ages was also lost, burnt in a fire.

Simply put, humans only have significance because we give each other significance.  It is only in society can we have any effect on the scheme of things.  Without society, we are nothing.  You can not rebel against a society that does not exist, you can not progress a society that does not exist, you can not influence, control, manifest or do any like action on a society that does not exist.  If you look up the term significance in the dictionary, you are returned with this: the quality of being worthy of attention; importance.  When you really think about it, our whole existence is in no way signifiant.  If there was any cataclysmic event that were to wipe us out, a mass extinction of man, there would be nothing left of us.  No one, even if there were other intelligent forms of life, would know or hear about what we have endured, what we have created, or what we have suffered.  Without knowing, there is no “importance” in our existence because any step toward progress will eventually be forgotten to the cosmos and to time.

As I said this is all relative to the global scheme of things.  As long as there is society, we all have some individual significance.  We all effect those around us, for the good or for the worse and we all have some small local meaning and “importance.”  It would be an imprudent decision now to stop striving for progress because the in the present, the end of our species currently is unforeseeable.  However our significance as a species overall will eventually run out with time, but in the present, as long as there is a present, we will maintain our importance and significance.