Examples How Issues Come to Matter
Thomas Gajdosik: Thomas found God to be important in life. This happened because he was living with his parents who themselves tried to do that and tried to give him the opportunity to do that. They would go to Mass together. They would explain what is needed and why for God to be important. He had people around who talked positively about that and who encouraged him. (written down by Andrius Kulikauskas)
Thomas Gajdosik: Thomas cared to lose weight. As a child he had a notion that it was not good to be overweight. He could not do what others could do. As a child, youth and young adult he played soccer. He could be quite fast, in spurts, but was overweight and thus less fit than others, with less stamina. Everything took more effort, including walking. He tried fasting, he tried special diets but this would only help for a few weeks and then his weight would go back up. Ten or fifteen years ago it became important. His mother suggested some books. He read some books. People in his vicinity were losing weight. He practiced intermittent fasting, not eating after 6:00 pm and not eating before lunch. He got used to eating less. He learned to not eat more than he needed to eat. It became a habit, a general attitude. He learned to live differently but not as a strict rule. He learned to lose weight over a longer time and not right away. (written down by Andrius Kulikauskas)
Jere Northrop: A clap of thunder wakes me up. It is raining through the window. I don’t want the floor and rug to get wet. I get up and close the window. Does it matter? Yes. If the rug gets wet it may mold and a wet floor may be slippery.
Jere Northrop: A bird song wakes me up. It is a Robin. I hear a Song Sparrow, a Baltimore Oriole, an English Sparrow, a Blue Jay, a Cardinal, a Starling, a Bluebird, a Flicker. It is 4:30 AM, June 22, 2025. I get up, go to the bathroom, get dressed, go downstairs and make a cup of coffee, go outside and sit on the deck, and start my bird list for the day: June 22, 2025: 1 Robin, 2 Song Sparrow, 3 Baltimore Oriole, 4 English Sparrow, 5 Blue Jay, 6 Cardinal, 7 Starling, 8 Bluebird, 9 Flicker. The list will total 32 birds by the end of the day. It records some of who I am and what I do. I write the list down in my 2025 bird journal. I can go back to my 2002 bird journal and see the same birds, maybe in a different order. It documents and validates who I am and what I have been doing. In many ways 2025 is similar to 2002. Does it matter? I find it comforting and hopeful for the future.
Jere Northrop: I wake up. It is dark, quiet. There is no incoming stimulus or need. Who am I? I wait. I recite a mantra. It is pronounced:
U I E A
O Waa Yeh Ha
Du Pu Ru Bu
Chu Lu Tu Ku
Su Gu Fu Shoe
Nu Mu Wu Zu
The letter themselves are UIEA OQYH DPRB CLTK SGFX NMWZ. They correspond to the 8 “vowels” and 16 “consonants” of the Ododu language as defined in the Derivation of Archetypal Meaning. It takes me about 6 seconds to speak them, less to say them in my mind. See Math 4 Wisdom / Language of Wisdom. I almost instantaneously and emotionally understand who I am, What I am doing, and Why I am doing it. I then can browse through my memories to see what I should or want to do today and how I plan on doing it. Does it matter? It does to me.
Ryan Buchanan: Drug addiction - I can remember my earliest experiences with addiction. I was a small child and was obsessed with video games. However, while video games can stimulate the mind, challenge us, offer us new worlds to explore, etc., as a child I was very puzzled by cigarette addiction, and other such things. It seemed so obvious to me that these were simply things people shouldn't do; after all, they're taught to us as absolute negatives with no benefit. It wasn't until I was seventeen that I first experimented with marijuana, psychadelics, and yes, alcohol and tobacco. (I had had a couple shots one Halloween before this, and snuck into my mom's Four Locos with a friend when I was a teenager, but it was never "normal" or ritualistic or something that I craved). Drug addiction should be of obvious importance: tens of thousands die every year of overdoses on opiates alone, and these drug cultures replace and wreck actual culture in a very tragic way, leaving shells of people.
Ryan Buchanan: "Higher-order effects:" again, I can trace this back to when I was a kid. As a Pokémon fan, we were always drawn to rare cards: the rarer, the better, and it was that simple. Also, always in my life when I have listened to music, the music has stuck out to me way more than the lyrics. In particular, my attention would be drawn to tiny, subtle details that would cause the song to get stuck in my head. It could be like two notes on a xylophone in an otherwise jazz-focused song, or something like that, and that little sound would play in my head over and over. So, this interest in both rarity and minute subtleties both culminate in a psychological profile that is not what I would consider "average;" it is a hipster-esque psyche that is drawn intentionally to the esoteric and obscure, and this also plays into my interest in neurodivergence and mindfulness meditation.
Ryan Buchanan: "Continental mathematics:" I am drawn to unique ways of self-expression, in the fashion of Montijn's "Will to Beauty." I have always been so full of ideas, but never really had the patience or time to master every art I wanted to. For instance, one of my favorite past-times as a kid was sharing movie ideas, book ideas, invention ideas, ideas for games... the list goes on. Ideas were real to my friends and I, and they had life, and playing with ideas is an endless game. If an idea is rare, then you feel special for having it, and if someone else has the same idea, you get to feel a connection to them, so really it's a win-win scenario.
Ryan Buchanan: I was also very good at computation at a young age, and wondered about the complicated symbols used in advanced math. I was naïve at this age, and thought that everything would all eventually be taught to us in school, but I wound up having to teach myself all this stuff on my own. I just like to play with ideas and symbols, because it's a way to harness pure creativity without giving it a "flesh," so to speak. It's pure Platonic joy and beauty.
Ryan Buchanan: I used to believe that there was some cold, brute truth, and science was the pursuit of discovering that. For some people, that's enough, but for me, i have relaxed the dividing line between art and knowledge, and I can appreciate whimsical theories and find them compelling for their own internal reasons.
Ryan Buchanan: A lot of this had to do with my religious journey: I went through a period of scientific atheism in my early teenage years, and as I came back to religion I dabbled with mysticism, magick, Wicca, etc... that still leaves a mark on me.
Ryan Buchanan: Even before this, years before I would ever touch marijuana, I enjoyed coming up with "stoner" philosophical ideas and sharing them with my friends; "what if your reality branches off into a separate universe where you keep living when you die?" or "what if you die and wake up and your whole life was a single dream?" I thought about quantum immortality, the simulation hypothesis, etc., way before I ever even heard about them.
Marcus Petz: When I was young I was aware on an intellectual level of other languages, but did not live in a community where they were used. As I am older and I have experienced the nuances and shades they offer to existence they have become something I am more aware of. They have become part of my existence and part of me. Thus they have come to matter as art of aculturation in a community and family.
Marcus Petz: Justice. It is not that fairness and a just, equitable way of being did not matter. But until I experienced injustice directly and indirectly they did not matter. Here it was not a direct experience of any particular injustice, but an intellectual projection of how injustice can rebound on me or others. This has happened by becoming aware of the concepts and ideas around injustice. So here it is a reasoning rather than only an awareness. Specific examples are around prejudice and discrimination on matters that are not relevant to the descrimination - agism rather than age appropriateness; sexism rather that gender awareness.
Marcus Petz: Marcus came to care about "rural renaissance". He grew up in the countryside and was glad to move to the city as a young man and enjoy it's opportunities. But then he came to realize how he liked nature. And he wished that the countryside was thriving. So this came to matter through juxtaposition, the comparison of countryside and city, having experience living in both. (written down by Andrius Kulikauskas)
Andrius Kulikauskas: I am riding the bus to spend a few days in Vilnius, celebrate Thanksgiving with my parents and brother, and I realized a few days ago that I need to take care of all of my Christmas shopping because I won't be back until just before Christmas.
Andrius Kulikauskas: I see a piece of trash on the sidewalk as I am walking, or on the road if I am on my bike, or perhaps not far from me as I stop on the roadside. I have made it a habit to pick up trash and throw it away, when that is convenient. Various factors affect whether I do.
- Perhaps it crosses my path and I just have to reach down and pick it up.
- Perhaps I know that there will be a trash can nearby or I can see one nearby.
- Perhaps it is a bit off to the side but the trash is quite prominent or it seems clean (so I won't dirty or contaminate myself) or there is not much trash around (and so it seems out of place, and it will make more of an impact if I throw it away) or the place is nice or representative of my city or country (and so I want it to look nice and I want to think well of it).
- Perhaps I don't see a trash can and am not sure if I will see one but I realize that I have somewhere to put the trash, perhaps my pocket or the back of my bike.
- Perhaps I don't feel inspired to pick it up but then I tell myself that I should because this will make me more sensitive, responsive, caring and not apathetic or this is my opportunity to what any good person would do (and thus not think of myself as special) and also to participate as a citizen, a steward, an active participant of my (imaginary) community.
- Perhaps there are other pieces of trash and I take the opportunity to pick them up as well, and perhaps my hands are full or I simply feel that is enough, I have done my small share and let others pick up the rest.
- Perhaps none of this registers sufficiently, the trash is inconveniently located, or I am in a hurry, and then I may think that others
As a Lithuanian cub scout, perhaps eight years old, I was impressed by an activity where we were given plastic bags which we filled with pieces of trash that we collected in the campgrounds. We saw who could pick up the most trash. Later I made a habit of picking up and throwing away trash that I found, especially if it annoyed me or I had nothing better to do, for example, waiting for a bus.
Andrius Kulikauskas: The bin in which I keep popcorn seeds was empty. It was time to fill it up again from the bags of popcorn seeds that I had bought in the store. I wanted to make popcorn but I did not have enough for the batch. So I needed to refill the bin. I found four bags in the cooler where I keep them. But I didn't want to dig down further into the cooler. So I filled the bin only three-quarter of the way. But that was enough for quite some time and thus for now.
Andrius Kulikauskas: A mouse left some poop on my kitchen table. I do not want this to make me sick or to contaminate me or my food. I do not want to be cleaning up after mice because I think it just makes the sponges dirty. So I set out my mouse traps. But I don't catch any mice. So then I use glue on cardboard. This is more effective. I found out about the glue because it is sold next to the mouse traps. I don't want to use poison because I don't want dead mice decomposing in places of my house that I can't find or reach.
Andrius Kulikauskas: When I catch a mouse, I have to dispose of it. Once in a while the mouse is alive, which is why I like the plastic traps. Then I take the mouse and trap behind the barn and let it go there so that it might go into the barn and not the house. If the mouse is dead, then I don't necessarily take care of it right away but I do it after I've done my priority matters. I take it behind the barn and leave it there for a cat or otherwise. If the mouse is stuck to glue, then I have to bury it and I take the opportunity to move a plant such as a raspberry, and that becomes more of a chore, so I may do that later in the day. If the ground is frozen, then I throw it and the cardboard outside in the compost, and then I may cover it with sawdust and whatever I'm composting.