What criteria should be used to judge significance?

[ChrTh]

This thread is the result of the wanton slanderish attacks against my person in the "Israel allowing only Jews on flights" thread.
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In today's world of a million-and-one bloggers, pundits, mouthpieces, off-topic forums, and bobbleheads, it's seems like everything becomes a crisis. As a result, it's becoming increasingly harder to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of what constitutes a significant event. Granted, in most cases we have to wait some time to determine ... North Korea is a great example of this. Other times it's easy: Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, and the Asian Tsunami are examples.

So what criteria should we use? One line I've started saying is 'In 200 years this issue will put high school students to sleep' ... while I don't think it should be *that* stringent (can't you see it though, in chapter 25, early 21st century, of the 2206 history book: "Natural Disasters Shape the World" followed by three or four paragraphs discussing the Tsunami and Katrina...meanwhile, North Korea may not even be mentioned in the chapter at all), I think we've reach the point where we might want to consider what truly makes something significant. Any ideas?

 

[jalapeno_dude]

It's still being talked about by mainstream media in two weeks.

Note that this renders most of the talk about high oil prices insignificant...probably true, as it seems to get brought up every month or so.

 

[emzie]

Significance varries person to person. What is your intreast? National significance is judged on the merrit of 'are there enough people intreasted to make this profitible to publish?' Given this Age of the Internet, that's a lot easier to accomplish.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

What criteria should be used to judge significance?

Katrina wasnt that significant an event. For Americans, and especially people in that part of the country, yes it was, but it didnt have global ramifications comparable to 9/11. I guess we can say that an event is 'significant' when it changes the course of global history, like 9/11, or Pearl Harbor.

 

[blackheart]

If you want to know if the event was significant, ask again in 10-20 years.

 

[ChrTh]

@Bozo: You're right, I was thinking in American History terms, not World History. Although I think it'll warrant a mention with the Tsunami in a 7th-grade history book.

 

[warpus]

If you can't figure out whether an event was significant or not, ask someone and they'll give you their opinion.