A Meditation on the Numbers, by the Numbers

I do not doubt that the over one trillion dollars of deficit is very real (particularly in terms of our relationship to China) and has very real effects (we see them every day on the news).  And yet, there’s the flip side of the coin in which talk of millions, billions and trillions is merely used as rhetoric intended to scare us, to frighten us, and to incite our anger.  Not that we shouldn’t be angry, but let’s make sure our anger is for the right reasons.

In his book Metamagical Themas, mathematician and popular writer Douglas Hofstadter includes an essay called “On Number Numbness.”  The point of the essay is summed up well in this line from it: “I have always suspected that relatively few people really know the difference between a million and a billion… This kind of thing worries me.  In a society where big numbers are commonplace, we cannot afford to have such appalling number ignorance as we do.  Or do we actually suffer from number numbness?  Are we growing ever number to ever-growing numbers?”  This essay was written in May 1982, when the thought of the government spending a trillion dollars on anything was still ludicrous.

The number numbness Hofstadter suggests is, I think, as real twenty-seven years after Hofstadter first wrote about it as it is today.  People who write on President Obama’s budget are sometimes encouraged by the fact that he has planned on reducing the now over one trillion dollar federal deficit to a mere half-trillion by the year 2012.  AIG (as I wrote on two weeks ago) has now been given over $170 billion in bail out money, and-as we are all hearing about (and I hope protesting, from a Christian perspective)-has recently issued over $150 million in bonuses to its executives.  What do these numbers mean, though?

I did a quick poll of my friends, and asked them what one billion means to them.  A friend named Josh said, “$3.33 for every man, woman, and child living in the USA.”  (His answer was reminiscent of something Congressman Barney Frank said today during the congressional hearing on AIG.  Paraphrasing, it was something like this: “The $170 billion used to bail out AIG translates into over $500 out of each American’s tax dollars.”)  My aunt Holly said simply that a billion is “More than I can visualize easily-a multitude, a plethora.”  And another friend, Cynthia, called it “an insanely large number.  Nobody can grasp what a million is, let alone a billion.  But context matters.  In the sciences or economics, it’s simply a unit of measurement.”  A unit of measurement, indeed, and yet I don’t disagree with Cynthia that it is an “insanely large” unit of measurement.

In the Christian tradition, we have some impossible numbers of our own.  I remember a hymn we used to sing in the Church of Christ, the church I grew up in-a fairly militant hymn, now that I think about it-the refrain of which proclaimed the miracle of Jesus’ death in this way:

“He could have called ten thousands angels

To destroy the world and set him free.

He could have called ten thousand angels,

But he died alone for you and me.”

If we’re looking for massive biblical numbers, consider the 144,000 elect mentioned in the book of Revelation (chapters 7 and 14), or the more than one million soldiers described in Chronicles’ account of David’s census (1 Chronicles 21:5).  Finally, how about the two hundred million heavenly warriors sent from God to destroy humanity in Revelation (9:16)?  In these Judeo-Christian examples-the hymn, 1 Chronicles and Revelation-one gets the sense that the numbers are used for exaggeration.  (For instance, in the Chronicles, quantities just tend to be higher than the parallel accounts in the books of Kings.)

And maybe that is the case when it comes to our economy and our nation’s budget as well.  I do not doubt that the over one trillion dollars of deficit is very real (particularly in terms of our relationship to China) and has very real effects (we see them every day on the news).  And yet, there’s the flip side of the coin in which talk of millions, billions and trillions is merely used as rhetoric intended to scare us, to frighten us, and to incite our anger.  Not that we shouldn’t be angry, but let’s make sure our anger is for the right reasons.

Here is one final take on the term “billion,” from my friend Joel.  He refers to a billion as a “McDonalds marketing strategy.”  This “humorous-if-it-weren’t-so-true” answer most closely captures the sense of number numbness I am trying to get across in his article.  Do we go to McDonalds because they can boast of the “billions and billions served” there, or because the food tastes good and is prepared quickly?  Honestly, I’m not sure what the answer is.  Similarly, does the two hundred million-strong angelic army in Revelation help us, the readers, to understand God’s power as incomprehensibly mighty or simply mightily incomprehensible?  Finally-and maybe most importantly-are we angered and upset about the United States’ financial meltdown because we keep hearing the impossibly high numbers, or because of the greed and corruption involved?

Or, to ask a more pointed question, is it possible that we hide in the safe anger that the numbers provide us with, rather than asking if our anger is a thin veil for our envy?  In other words, is there a sense in this financial meltdown that “they got theirs, so why can’t we get ours?” (whether “they” is the AIG executives, other financial institutions that have been bailed out, banks that are throwing corporate parties with bailout money, and so on).  I think the honest answer is yes, we are more than a little envious, and avoiding the knee-jerk reaction of anger or helplessness when faced with “millions, billions and trillions” involves admitting our own frustration and envy.  From a Christian perspective all of these approaches are appropriate: a level head about the numbers, righteous anger, and humble introspection.

Reading back over this article, honestly I’m not sure what the main gist is.  Perhaps this is the number numbness having its effect: it is hard even to know what to say in the face of such incomprehensible sums.  God help us.