The Cowardice of Quantity

“The Crowd” — 1928. Directed by King Vidor.

… hvor Mængde er, er Usandheden … Thi »Mængde« er Usandheden.

… where there is Quantity, there is Untruth … For “Quantity” is Untruth.

Søren Kierkegaard, Til Dedicationen »hiin Enkelte«

All that we experience in life is good and bad.
There is no moment of indifference. There is always a choice.
This hardly needs to be said, but it’s overlooked far too often.
Our modernity is so awash in measurements and quantifications
We forget that the world is first and foremost an existence
Of joy, beauty, pain, and horror.
If experience were wholly objective,
If it were merely the outcome of mathematical formulae,
It would be as meaningless as it were numerous.

(Let us not be hasty:)
It is not so much that we can pinpoint meaning.
No, we cannot trap it and house it in a zoo.
Zarathuštra saw good and bad as twins.
He could distinguish between them,
But not with a passing glance.
Surely, meaning is a moving target,
But it’s always there, right in front of us.
And yet we refuse to acknowledge it.
We avert our gaze and call it illusion.

Why is it that we refuse to decipher the mysteries of good and evil?
Perhaps it is too hard. Perhaps it is too consequential.
Perhaps it is our training.
We judge quality with quantity. We only trust the numbers.
When confronted by evil we start counting.
What cowards we have become.