The Significance Impulse: On the Unimportance of Our Cosmic Unimportance

Why should we strive to be important? Does it make our lives go better if we are especially significant? The Significance Impulse argues that the common impulse to seek exceptionally high levels of significance is misguided.

Although many people strive to be extraordinarily significant, ultimately cosmic importance is out of reach for us. Even if we do matter somewhat in our communities, we cannot reach cosmic-grade significance. We do not have the size, duration, or power that would allow us to be that important. Even the value that we do contribute to the universe, our loving and rationality and pain and pleasure, are in short supply. What is more, being exceptionally significant would not be to our personal benefit, as it does not advance our well-being, our meaning in life, or any other of our interests.

In this book, Joshua Glasgow argues that we have ample reason to embrace our modest levels of mattering. If we do not matter very much, then we are liberated to go about our lives without worry to the same extent. As such, we should feel good about our unexceptional lives. This book is a celebration of being ordinary.

Joshua Glasgow works on a wide range of topics in moral and political philosophy, philosophy of race, and value theory. Currently Professor of Philosophy at Sonoma State University, he has also taught at Victoria University of Wellington, University of California Berkeley, and Occidental College. This is his first book about being important. Other books with Oxford University Press include The Solace: Finding Value in Death through Gratitude for Life and Four Views on Race (co-authored).