Solving Problems

I was on a subway platform thinking about work, about how to initiate a software metrics program, and there was what I suspected was a homeless man sitting on the bench, eating a bit of food. The reason I assume he was homeless was that he had a wheeled cart filled to the top, the contents packed in a hodge-podge collection of plastic bags and had a milk crate full of food. He was surprisingly clean, and seemed nice enough.

Watching for a few moments, it becomes clear that he was invisible. I observed 12 people walk by, most people glanced then made sure they were looking away when they watched by. There was no observable acknowledgment of his existence.

There is nothing special about my observation. I'm sure there are more poignant description of such events with diatribes into social issues. The point of this post, however, was that I started thinking about "important" problems.

I consider myself to be of at least, average, intelligence, and here I was spending some of my spare time, waiting for the train, thinking about how best to solve the problems of a corporation. I do enjoy problem solving and I find crafting solutions to be enjoyable. Additionally, I like to be successful in my profession and I don't mind being compensated for my efforts. But why do I spend my time thinking about solving problems for work. What about the important problems of the world and what I am doing to help.

So the question I ponder, is the fact that people are paid to solve work problems the only reason they think about them ?

Why is there so little emphasis on solving the important problems of the world ? Or maybe there is a problem with how we define important.