[troutwine]

I think what the OP is getting at is that not knowing about something in great detail doesn't mean it's not important. Folks'll hew to what they find immediately pressing or have an inclination toward. Which is to say, the world is monstrously complicated and we are small and there's only so much an individual can focus on in their life. The collapse of fish populations due to overfishing will cause starvation, a lot of it. The erosion of personal privacy will abet a certain kind of tyranny. I don't think these are different scales of important but they are different problems that require detailed knowledge to comprehend to a good degree, which implies time and interest.