The Numbers Game

Disclaimer: The views I share are mine and mine alone. I apologize to those I may have hurt in my rash generalizations.

Sitting at my computer with two more take-home final essays to go, I'm thinking about this little discussion I had with my science friend Andrew. He's alright, but we got into a bit of an argument today on the merits of cutting arts out of school over maintaining math. It got me to thinking to why science and art persons can be so hostile towards eachother, then I remembered this little quote from Stalin or Remaque, depending on where you've heard it:

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

This in my opinion represents the worst in math and science; everything's a number to be filed; a formula to be solved; a statistic to be posted. No more, no less.

Numbers can lie; numbers can device; numbers can be for fools. When politicians such as the Governor of Wisconsin Walker say that they're taking away "bargaining rights", it's to make it look like a business deal. They hide the fact that "bargaining rights" are right to assemble, as promised under the First Amendment, next to freedom of expression and freedom of religion. When a chief of staff or a wartime reporter talks about "collateral damage", it's to make it look like numbers of destroyed properties instead of numbers of slain civilians. When you hear about the national death from Tea Party candidates and conservative pundits on Fox News, they throw around words like "trillion" and "billions" not because it's the truth, but if you throw big numbers around enough, you can scare people.

The fastest way to detach a people from their humanity is to take away their identity and slap on a number; more effective than giving them a label. It's why the nation of Eurasia refers to England as "Airstrip One" or why the Holy Empire of Britannia calls Japan "Area 11", or why the Brave New World catagorizes newborns into alphas and betas; it's easy to detach yourself from a living, human being or group of them if you just attach a number and not even bother with a label or a slur. Don't talk about "illegal aliens" in terms of names like Juan or Maria; just throw around words like "millions" and "thousands" and how they relate to the border. Don't talk about dissidents in the Middle East as "protesters"; use buzzwords like "Muslim Brotherhood" and "revolution" and add an inflated number to it.

You can also use numbers to misinform and confuse people. Throw a person in Room 101 and apply enough electroshock; you can convince the toughest man around you're holding up five fingers when you're holding two. It's not "hundreds" or even "a few" out of all the upstanding, peaceful Muslim individuals in the world, it's "millions" and "several" if you want to whip up enough fear into convincing individuals that one mosque that's only a "couple" blocks away from Ground Zero instead of "several" blocks away. You can convince thousands to vote Republican; to burn Korans; to breed discontent and irrational hatred against real people who don't fit in to the American WASP paradigm. You can falsely accuse a whole swath of upstanding Muslim individuals that they're in the league with terrorists successfully just like Representive King in his current Anti-Muslim Witch Hunt that's on a scale that would make McCarthy proud.

Maybe I'm just really frustrated since it's finals week; maybe I had too much tequila a couple nights ago and now my mind's a little off. Maybe I'm listening to too much Muse. And I know that words are just as dangerous, like how we waged conquest a century ago in the name of saving our "brown brothers" from themselves or how right after 9/11 we used terms like "Islamo-Fascism" to refer to the governments and mentality of the Middle East. But when it comes down to it, the mind has a hard time comprehending numbers on a large scale. When someone murders dozens, we have them executed or locked away for life; when someone kills hundreds or even thousands, we put them under house arrest or even leave them in power. When Bernie Maddof steals millions from charities and investors he's a thief and sent to prison, but when the banks take billion in "bailouts", we let them give huge bonuses and manipulate a large segment of the population to rally against any regulation to stop them from doing this again because it's "redistributing wealth" and "socialist".

It's a lot easier to think of a number instead of a person.