The Overall Picture, 3

Furthermore, speaking more generally, it’s the relationship between the overall picture and the relative importances: all importances are relative to one another and to survival, in that anything is evaluated as more or less important than something else in producing a higher level of survival; the wider one’s picture, and the more realistically and accurately one assigns relative importances to things. If one’s view is limited to the deck, one may decide that the most important thing to do is scrubbing the deck, and that it’s not that urgent; when one discovers there is a hull under the deck, and it’s leaking, one may re−evaluate and decide that the most important thing to do is repairing the breach in the hull, and that it’s somewhat urgent.

To further underline the importance of your awareness, I wish it didn’t escape your attention how I used two similar terms which, even though they could be confused, are two distinct and separate ones: the overall scene, and the overall picture. The scene is the state of things. The picture is your awareness of the state of things. All the traps are hidden in the gap from the picture to the scene.
Watch your gap, then.

Some say, “tout se tient”, “everything is connected” in French. As you confront the fact that your overall picture is the scope of your awareness of an actual overall scene, and that an overall scene is composed of actual items, their actual relative importances, and the actual cause−effect relationships between them, you realise how serious, tangible and precise is what this phrase hints at.

The above is a first answer as to what do you need an overall picture for: the closer your overall picture to the overall scene, the better. The better for you, the better for all, the better for everything. And the farthest, the worse, worth stressing it.

But once again there’s more to it than meets the eye: suppression. Reconsider, re−evaluate all of the above in the presence of suppression. This is the full answer as to what do you need an overall picture for: the closer your overall picture to the overall scene containing suppression, the better. And the farthest, the worse.
In terms of life or death. And of peace or hell, too.