Gaining a better understanding of the conflict in Syria, natural disasters affecting Haiti or terrorism that
continually ravages the Middle East and parts of Africa is important because we can then decipher for ourselves the impact Americans can have in those situations.
Thus a Platonist might be most impressed with the
ravages of time, its
continually nugatory effect to make all temporal things transient and thus only half real, existing only in a perpetual process of perishing.