Numbers
We have tamed the universe with numbers, but lost something in the process
We live in numerical times. We are told to eat five a day, walk 10,000 steps, and to not let your BMI go above 25. We are presented with statistics such as that 23% of people in the UK are obese, two percent are underweight, and 350,000 people use food banks. Otherwise intelligent people get excited by polls showing Labour are three percentage points ahead of the Conservatives or that 60% of people in Scotland will vote 'No' in the referendum. What would we do if we didn't know that the FTSE was up half a point and that West Brom won three-nil? Numbers offer a measure of certainty in an uncertain world.
And they have have been useful, providing abstract representations of the real world, allowing us to measure and evaluate. Without numbers there would be no scientific method, no man on the moon, no smartphone in your pocket and no nuclear bombs in silos across the globe. Numbers are the very basis of civilisation. Indeed, the earliest writing systems were based on numbers, as Sumerian rulers sought to preserve on clay tablets information about harvests and taxes. Since then we have been enthusiastically assigning arbitrary numerical values to everything under the sun: measuring, counting, weighing, clocking, calculating, and testing.
One numerical development I've noted with interest is the Quantified Self (QS) movement - a collection of lifehackers who use technology to become fitter, happier and more productive. Inspired by their efforts, I started tracking steps, sleep, calories, nutrition, weight, mood, I even had my DNA sequenced to find out my odds of acquiring various diseases. By reducing life to numbers we can identify a variable, change it and test whether the world is a better place. Feel tired? Then stop eating bread and see if that helps. Depressed? Why not find out if exercise makes you feel better? Anything that can be quantified, will be quantified. Unfortunately, anything that cant be quantified becomes brushed over and ignored.
There is, for instance, a smartphone application that urges you to rate your happiness out of ten at random intervals, helping you to see how your emotions change in different contexts. What the developers seem to have forgotten is that nothing undermines happiness quicker than being asked if you're happy. Happiness comes from being lost in the moment and the act of observing makes us lose all flow. What does it even mean to assign numbers to a mood? Is it good to feel happy at a funeral? The QS movement promises control and mastery, but far from being able to control life, my experience was that the numbers become a prison: controlling me, providing superegoic judgement, filling my days with admin, and making me feel vain and narcissistic. The urge to quantify is, as Adam Curtis shows in The Trap, part of the neoliberal target-driven culture that has served to dehumanise people and desiccate the planet. By forcing the messiness and vitality of life into the abstract world of numbers we become distanced from reality, instrumentalising existence, valuing it more for its function than for its beauty.
The Pirahã
Thankfully, there is nothing inevitable about numbers. In the Amazon rainforest there is a tribe of people called the Pirahã who don't have them. Instead they have vague concepts like a few and 'many. The effect of this on their society is difficult to know definitively, but there are some interesting correlations that show how profoundly transformative life could be if we put less focus on numbers.
Here are some Pirahã facts:
They live almost entirely in the present moment, caring nothing for past or future;
They don't believe in religions like Christianity, because the followers have never met Jesus in person;
The worst thing you can do in their society is tell someone what to do;
They sleep for 15 minutes every few hours, sitting around talking and laughing together for the rest of the time;
They have no concept of sexual propriety and will apparently exchange sex for ring pulls;
They hunt occasionally, but also enjoy going without food in order to become 'hard'.
It is as if by not having numbers the Piraha are more attuned to what really matters in life: friendship, conversation, fun. By contrast the world of mortgages, pollsters and search engine optimisation is incredibly drab and depressing. We have lost our sense of value.
Now I'm not suggesting we stop using numbers and revert to primitive communism - although I would be interested to try it as an experiment - but rather we need to remember that numbers are not the only form of truth.
As it stands we live with the opposite situation: ignoring the qualitative. Numbers make the world seem less absurd, but that is precisely what it is. So let's embrace the absurdity and trust our instincts for a change.
This article was originally published in issue ten of New Escapologist magazine.
Read my other New Escapologist articles.