It is much harder to answer this question than you think.
In our "modern" societies, money seems to be at the top of the list. If you don't have it, it can seem like money is all that matters. If you have a lot of it, you get pretty attached to what it can do for your life. I haven't seen too many people WANT to lose the comforts they have risen to.
In equaling human value to money, we have set up a system of national and international opinions.
Poor people are never seen as valuable. If there isn't anyone less than you, you are at the bottom of the economic scale, so you have to make sure there is someone lesser than you.
People who cost too much to keep around are easy to let go...by starvation, if need be...and against their will, the will of those who love them and would be willing to care for them, by lethal injection, by making them feel that they are a burden on society and need to be willing to die, by murdering them, by profiting by their slavery, by harvesting their organs and selling them, by not treating them, by doing a lot of things that are not worthy of any humane society.
Money seems to create our value systems, including how we value ourselves. We seem to think that people are "successful" to the degree they have money.
We see in America and other places in the world that money issues turn seemingly nice people into really horrible people. The fear of not having enough, not staying at the comfort level you are use to, can make men and women change...
- There has to be someone to blame,
- someone to make this painful change go away,
- some way to make the government provide what we want,
- and some way to make poor people stop taking all the money we need for ourselves.
Riots happen when our lifestyles are forcibly reduced.
In socialist countries it is called "austerity measures," but it really means the government is going broke. When the government goes broke, so do its citizens.
In America, austerity measures would affect Social Security and Medicare, Senior meal programs, Welfare, Food Stamps (SNAP), WIC, and Medicaid, School Lunch programs, School Health Clinics, Alternative Schools, Homeless programs, subsidies for housing, transportation, and home ownership, Early Childhood Education, all the charities that operate with government funding, and more than I can think of right now.
We aren't an official government-run country, yet, but we are almost there. Our taxes keep rising, and our personal incomes keep falling. This seems, to me, to be a direct road into a government-run lifestyle. The last I calculated it, taxes are taking half of some people's incomes already, some pay less and some pay more, but it seems to me that EVERYONE is paying too much!
When you try to decide what the most important thing in the world really is, it is impossible to decide.
If there is no food, then food rises up to the top of the list.
No water? Right up there.
How about no air to breathe?
( How would any of us solve these problems ? ! )
What about freedom? America is the land of the free, right? Have you looked at our country lately? We have some serious problems and they are reducing our freedoms every day. We sacrifice freedom for money, for a job, for public safety, for the rights of a few instead of the rights of most, for fifteen minutes of fame......
What about our personal dreams? Are they the most important thing in the world? Maybe just in our world...
The battles between good people and those who will do "whatever it takes" to get whatever they want are increasing.
People in China and India can take away our lives by hacking our computers...how do we protect ourselves from things like that? Most ordinary people have no idea.
What about the rapidly rising problem of gangs? Shootings are growing and innocent people are caught up in the violence and drama. America is becoming the land of the gang lord, not the land of the free.
Those without any sense of morality are overcoming our children, our families, our churches, our schools, our lives. Watching or reading the news is becoming a lesson in crime. Watching TV and listening to the radio is becoming an X-rated encounter. Without a biblical sense of morality, there are no guidelines, no boundaries, no ways to measure right and wrong, and no respect for other human beings. There is nothing to use as a guide. What good people consider harmful for human consumption becomes the norm.
What IS the most important thing in the world?
What one thing can't we live without?
What one thing is everything else built upon?
What ONE thing matters more than anything else?
I don't think it's money, even though money is a tool to make life better for ourselves and others. If there wasn't any money, what would matter most?
It is a hard question to answer... even if you say "GOD" is the most important thing in the world.
Before there was a printing press, there was only what people shared with each other, what they learned from the rabbi, the priest, the pastor, the teacher, the parent... is there a GOD if there isn't a Bible to read? Is education important? Reading? Or just good leaders?
Is the internet replacing the printing press? Can we rely on it? How will we know if something has been altered? words and meanings changed? if something is true? The internet is making us vulnerable to coercion, manipulation, bad judgments, wrong decisions, all based on the possibility that our sources will be compromised.
We are heading into a world that none of us can even imagine right now. Who will be our leaders? Will their decisions be based on money, on GOD, on their own self-interests, the needs of others, moral principles or lusts?
What do you think the most important thing in the world is?
