Numbers, essential as they are, seem to have taken over our lives.
Even our seers have to watch their watches—currently perhaps the digital ones on their smart phones. Time is money and money is all.
This view might have first gained currency in England, during its industrial revolution, but in the centuries since then it has spread to every country. Those who do not live by it swim against the tide. One might as well be in denial of gravity.
Monetary values are attached to most things, including living things. Even human lives have actuarial values. It is the same with activities and occupations. Those with lower monetary worth are devalued.
Finance and economics had naturally been born from numbers. Humans, corporations and entire nations are ranked and described by these.
The physical sciences, engineering and technology have of course been based on measurements and calculations. But now, even medical science increasingly rests on measured numbers.
More generally, anything that cannot be measured and so cannot have numbers affixed to it is is disregarded or dismissed. Such things are viewed as inconsequential and are even rendered invisible.
The revolution in information processing and communication has of course been a digital one, based on numbers, most commonly in their most basic, binary forms. This has made us even more dependent on numbers and even more enslaved through them—and seemingly to them.
We are now routinely identified by our numbers, and those with power over us, including financial institutions and governments, literally have our numbers.
Here are some metrical reflections on this phenomenon.
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Numbered
From yes and no and repetition rise
Our newest wonders and our newest lies.
And streams of these, that merge at logic-gates,
Predict our futures and decide our fates.
From one and zero, is the world construed—
With all its shades and subtleties imbued?
Or are these primal numbers mere devices
With which to breed yet more of human vices?
We look around the world we’ve made and see
That Number is indeed a deity.
We count our money and we strive for more.
In learning, as in soccer, there’s a score.
We rank the players and the jobs we do
And happiness has now its index too.
A war is gauged by tonnage dropped and deaths—
And driven by the “windfalls” that it nets.
And money is of course the number that
Knocks all the other jousting numbers flat.
So income, wealth and GDP and more
Are numbers at the center and the fore.
******
But “wealth and power” are the twins conjoined
(And so that phrase in earlier times was coined),
And what is power if it lacks in force?
So arms and numbers never seek divorce.
Investments, in a war or in the land,
Are things that lords and bankers understand,
But now this Understanding Old has spread
And been, with Streaming Digits, duly wed.
There’s number, number, number everywhere.
It rules—and runs through ocean, land and air.
Our bodies and our minds have been reduced
To numbers that are measured or deduced.
The doctors now consults the oracles
That know our numbers. Seeming miracles
Are wrought by robots that can operate.
Our numbers get the job and find the mate.
In science based on mathematics, counts
Are needed—and, in finance, the amounts
Are all that matters. All our new machines
Subsist on numbers—though behind the scenes.
******
But can sensation and perception be
Devolved to measures of a quantity?
And are the qualities that we perceive
No more than mere constructions that deceive?
Are colors such as reds and greens and blues
No more than wavelengths that we see as hues
Or oscillations in a neural field—
And not the qualities these pulses yield?
Can all the vortices of our affairs
Be mapped, like those of galaxies, in stairs
Ascending and descending, on a scale
That has in it a point that is a whale?
Who dares to pause, within the lines of labor,
Will find, bestowed upon her head, no favor
From overseers—or even from her peers—
For pausing lowers numbers, raises fears.
And pausing might permit reflection, thought
Among the ones in mills and numbers caught.
And thought, that wonders why the numbers reign,
May question things we’d rather not explain.
*****
Could numbers be as blinkers to our visions
That force us to be focused on the missions
To which we each have duly been assigned—
The tasks to which, like asses, we're resigned?
For fears, desires there may be measures, yet
Are loves and duties fishes in the net?
Are there dimensions that are qualities
That can’t be reached by measured quantities?
We each need meanings in the lives we live.
What meaning can a mark that’s measured give?
To ask such questions is to be a fool.
We’ve made a word in which the numbers rule.
We’ve been conditioned by our jobs and schools
To follow orders and to follow rules—
And one of these is to always strive for worth
In grades and cash—until returned to earth.
The numbers certainly have uses, friends,
But numbers surely cannot be our ends.
Let numbers be our tools and weapons, braves!
But let's not be, to all these numbers, slaves.
2019, March 29th, Friday
Brooklyn, New York
