An event is said to be relevant when it is considered important for some reason. The concept of relevance is equally applicable to people who are recognized for some merit or for their prestige. Likewise, it is a term that has a subjective and an objective dimension.
Relevance from a personal perspective
Each individual has his personal priorities and his own scale of values. This implies that what is relevant to one may be irrelevant to another. Saying that something seems relevant to us is a way of indicating that it has a peculiar rank for us. However, most people agree on the idea of valuing a series of aspects in life as important: health, economic stability and affectivity (the classic formula of health, money and love).
Relevant historical events
Certain historical facts are valued as relevant from an objective point of view. Thus, there are facts that have an unquestionable influence on the course of events. No one doubts that in the recent history of humanity some episodes have this characteristic: the Cold War, the arrival of man on the Moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall or 9/11 in New York in 2001. It is not necessary to prove their relevance, since it is evident that these are episodes that have marked an era and that have become historical facts that are studied in history books.
Reflections on the idea of relevance
Each cultural tradition has its own definition of what is relevant or not. For an Amazon tribe that lives isolated from the world, 9/11 or the arrival of man on the Moon is irrelevant. This reminds us that the importance of events is relative.
It is not always obvious that something is relevant or not. In this sense, a scientific investigation can go unnoticed by the vast majority of individuals but end up being a matter of vital importance.
Somehow the figure of the historian is the one who determines the relevance of some facts. Thus, in the research process, a piece of information that is initially irrelevant can become very important.
With some frequency what is relevant remains hidden and more attention is paid to what becomes fashionable at a given moment. To label something as relevant, a certain period of time must elapse. What is fleeting, ephemeral or a simple trend is relatively easily forgotten, but the same is not the case with what is really important.
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