The Importance of Significance

Srishti Goyal

            A symbol can be an act or an object that represents an idea or a thought.  Human beings have an affinity for prescribing symbolism to all manner of things relevant to their lives.  Symbolism itself is a means of imparting importance.  Symbols are applied only when an idea or an object is deemed to be meaningful.  They are a convenient way to communicate meanings for broader concepts.  For example, life is often defined as a search for a means to happiness.  As such, the search for happiness is a metaphor, and thus a symbol, for the complications endured in life’s journey.  But the “journey of life” differentiates from one individual to another. One defines life as it applies to oneself.  But it would be incorrect to assume that individuals alone give meaning and importance to their lives.  Each individual does not have a system of absolute autonomy that governs his/her life.  While an individual does possess a moral value system, it would be amiss to ignore the several external factors that contribute to the shaping of a belief system: social, economic, physical, and emotional concerns.  Each of these factors holds a certain presence in one’s life that cultivates one’s mindset.  The fascination with this designation of importance and significance is primarily addressed by Annie Dillard in her essay, “The Wreck of Time.”  Dillard motivates her readers to question how they determine significance.  She explores this intriguing subject by addressing statistics that often detail life and death scenarios.  Her thoughts and questions are further exemplified by Beth Loffreda’s close examination of the events following the murder of a homosexual, University of Wyoming student, Matthew Shepard in “Selections from Losing Matt Shepard.”  As for the entity that determines importance and meaning James C. Scott’s “Behind the Official Story,” analyzes the power dynamic that can be applied to the research of how symbolization occurs and who or what partakes in it.  It would be best, though, to understand some basic concepts that illustrate Scott’s analyses.  Scott coins two terms that are used continually throughout his essay: the public transcript and the hidden transcript.  The public transcript is the dialogue between a superior and his/her subordinate.  The hidden transcript is the dialogue that occurs when either the superior or the subordinate is not present.  Scott presents the technicalities involved in determining importance, Loffreda provides an example, and Dillard offers information that questions a human’s ability to place meaning and significance. 

            In her piece, Dillard aggressively pursues the conscience of her readers and demands that they think and wonder what is and what is not important to them.  Throughout her essay she provides a score of statistical information that mainly relates to poverty and death.  She deliberates upon the lack of feeling when there is an onslaught of negative news: “How about what journalists call ‘compassion fatigue’? Reality fatigue? At what limit for you do other individuals blur? Vanish?” (Dillard 127).  Dillard questions a human’s capacity for ‘compassion.’  Her assertive questioning incites a sense of guilt for many people because they have experienced “‘compassion fatigue,’” or the loss of empathy.   By asking her readers when their sympathy fades and “individuals blur,” she suggests directly that there is a limited capacity for the ability to feel sorrow.  This in turn suggests indirectly, that if one does have a limited accommodation for compassion then when one does exercise one’s commiseration it must hold a specific significance to oneself.  For Laramie, Wyoming, Matt Shepard’s death was important to them.  Shepard’s death was important to the media of America as well.  The murder was a highly publicized affair.  As Loffreda states, “But the crime, and Laramie, had already begun to take on a second life, a broadcast existence barely tethered to the truths of that night or this place, an existence nourished less by facts and far more by the hyperboles of tabloid emotion” (317).  Shepard’s murder gained a new significance defined “by the hyperboles of tabloid emotion.”  Despite the evident lack of a solid, factual foundation, the American public responded to the media’s overwrought articles on Matthew Shepard and joined the media in condemning Wyoming as a discriminatory community.  This is a prime example that to the American society emotion is much more valuable than a complete, accurate presentation of a horrific event.  The media’s brazen disregard for the “truths of that night or place” enraged the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming.  Laramie’s anger towards this portrayal results in an active attempt to prove that it is open-minded.  Caught up in the confusion of a heightened state of anger, many forgot the significance of Shepard’s death: prejudice within the community.  For Laramie, upset though it may have been by the loss of a member, Shepard’s death projected a negative image of the community to the entire nation.  What had begun as an emotionally stimulating story for the nation turned instead into an opportunity for the media to denounce Laramie for prejudice when the capacity of the nation for compassion had been exhausted. The individual, Matt Shepard, “blur[ed and] vanish[ed]” within the uproar created by his own death; the American society and its media placed significance on how and where Shepard died and not on who he was. 

Shepard’s murder had a great impact on the citizens of Laramie.  Loffreda analyzed the reactions of various members of Laramie.  For a community that barely had one murder a year, Shepard’s murder stunned Laramie.  His death made several members speculate on the effect the crime would have on the rest of the community.  Loffreda, herself a member of the community, recalls that:

Obviously, those signs suggested a typically American arithmetic, promiscuously mixing moral and economic registers. Underneath the sentiment lingered a question: what will his death cost us? But it would be wrong, I think, to see all those gestures as merely cynical calculation, a self-interested weighing of current events against future tourism (321).

She remembers signs posted in stores “mixing moral and economic registers” that proclaimed that the crime was not a typical Laramie occurrence followed by the prices of the goods or services offered by the business.  Although the gravity of the crime revealed feelings of hatred, Laramie was concerned with the state of its economy.  Thus, monetary affairs are a cause of significance. The business dealings in Laramie use Shepard’s death as a form of marketing, mixing support for the community and promoting products as well. The businesses, reporting their Laramie loyalty followed by a personal business loyalty, express a sort of hidden transcript—what is expressed when the superior or the subordinate is not present.  In this case, the superior being Laramie and the subordinate are the businesses. The business must acknowledge the community’s plight because “here we may perhaps say that the power of social forms embodying etiquette and politeness requires us often to sacrifice candor for smooth relations with our acquaintances” (Scott 522) and then these businesses can reinforce their economic needs.  “Embodying,” a key word, emphasizes that this exchange of “social forms” is a hidden transcript because it is a misrepresentation of how a person actually feels.  The “sacrifice [of] candor” is the public transcript.  When the business owners post such signs, they are engaging in a public transcript in which they practice “smooth relations” to ensure that they may sell their products.  It may very well be the case that these business owners are anti-homosexuality and do not despise the murder of Shepard.  But for their businesses to be successful they must cater to the needs of their customers, emotional or otherwise.  This shows the importance of economic well-being.  The public transcript of these businesses—marketing sympathy—gives significance to Laramie’s contention of its portrayal as a parochial town. 

            Scott is able to quickly identify the differences between the public and hidden transcript and the effect they have on discovering significance in life.  Scott’s in-depth analysis of the relationship between a dominant figure and a subordinate figure provides an original perspective.  His argument is found “by assessing the discrepancy between the hidden transcript and the public transcript [and by doing this] we may begin to judge the impact of domination on public discourse” (524).  To break down Scott’s interpretation of the power dynamic: the “discrepancy” between the transcripts is due to the “domination on public discourse.” For Scott’s argument to be true there must be a public transcript, in which there must also be the dominant and subordinate figures, and the hidden transcript. Were it that no dominant figure was present, there would also be no subordinate figure.  This would therefore, eliminate the power imbalance and also eliminate the need for a public transcript and a hidden transcript. This issue is indirectly addressed by Dillard: “Take the bomb threat away and what are we? We are ordinary beads on a never-ending string.  Our time is a routine twist of an improbable yarn” (127).  In this example, “the bomb threat” is analogous with death.  As a result, it can be noticed that Dillard is saying that death is a defining factor to the determination of meaning.  In the one moment of “[a] bomb threat,” life has meaning because it will come to an end.  Dillard continues to say that “we are ordinary beads on a never-ending string.” Without death, life will become a “never-ending string” in which our typical existences become “ordinary beads.”  As Dillard states, one’s life would become “a routine twist of an improbable yarn.”  The “twists” that complicate life would become “routine” and thus would not give significance to life.  In this instance, death is the dominant figure and life is the subordinate figure because it is subject to a consequences of this particular power dynamic’s superior, life’s own conclusion, which can be brought about only by the death of an individual.  The public transcript is the daily existence of an individual and the hidden transcript is any regrets the individual may have regarding his/her life.  The discrepancy between the public transcript and the hidden transcript signifies that meaning can be granted to an individual’s life when he/she strives to “judg[e] the impact of [death].”  When one attempts to overcome the discrepancy between the public transcript and the hidden transcript, one is also achieving meaning for one’s life without the need for the threatening reinforcement of death.  The natural response to life is death and this is essentially a defining component of one’s life.  However, it is not necessary to encourage the production of meaning.

With the thought-provoking statements made by Dillard, the factual foundation contributed by Scott, and the clarifications made by Loffreda’s examples, all three authors have extended a new knowledge of the significance of meaning itself.   That human beings search for and apply meaning to the daily activities that characterize their lives does not imply that that meaningfulness was obtained by sovereignty of life.  It is quite the opposite: external factors have become a crucial element in the process of finding and administering consequentiality.  External forces have become the dominant in Scott’s power dynamic serving to subdue a personal allocation of meaning.  Dillard expresses this by motivating one’s morality with her unique questions and statements regarding these external, dominant factors.  Shepard’s death displays the impact extraneous sources have upon the value system of individuals, and in this case, a whole community.  It is time to attribute meaning and significance in one’s life by oneself.  By questioning oneself, as Dillard does, one will begin to realize that the existing values one has, established by external factors, may not be what one would really deem significant.  One should learn from Shepard’s death that it is unwise to allow others to judge importance for you because significance can be misplaced.  One must also realize that the only dominant and subordinate figures in the practice of prescribing importance must be the warring opinions created by oneself.  The autonomy of significance in life can be achieved only by one’s willingness to forgo the easy accessibility of values reinforced by others and create one’s own through a personal analysis.  This can be done through the simple reassessment of everything one considers important.  One must verify and evaluate each meaningfulness or significance discovered.  Through this procedure, one will be able to eliminate false significances and strengthen the established ones with this new knowledge.