Do People Matter?

After diving into the chapters of Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism, I’m not sure if I’m even qualified to give an answer to such a multidimensional question, “Does everybody matter?”

I’ll take a stab at it anyways. After all, I’m almost a college graduate.

The “paul-ness” in me would like to say, “Yes. All people do matter.” Maybe the reality of this answer should be adjusted and say, “Most people do matter.”

I agree with Appiah; how we define our answers to this question weighs heavily on the cultural factors of our society.

We see all sorts of vehicles when we drive to work. And in the course of the subliminal thoughts of our minds, we might ask ourselves, “Is the middle-aged woman, wearing the black Luis Vuitton business suit, zipping by in her Lexus SC someone who matters? Perhaps we say, “I don’t know” and continue driving, but then we stop at a red light and see a homeless person holding up a sign: “Anything will help. God bless you.” Is the homeless person someone who matters? Would the woman driving the nice car equally matter as much if she was placed in a village in north China?

I feel that American culture directly measures who matters to status and degree of responsibility, and that does not necessarily equal out to what “should” matter. All of these metrics change when you move to another culture.

When the scope of the question shifts to people in corporate America’s supply chain, the scope of the answer does as well.

The response to the earlier question is more hierarchical in its structure. In the second question, the response becomes more circular.

Is the vice president for marketing more important than the vice president for business to business relations? Is the vice president for marketing more important than the lower management in charge of making sure the products are shipped out on time? The company’s survival depends on all pieces of the circle to function. Every person within a corporate supply change matters.

If there was a third question asked maybe it would be, “Do the jobs of the people working within a corporate American supply chain matter individually in terms of an American society as a whole?”