Dollars & Numbers are a limiting way to look at the world–they do not…

Dollars and Numbers are a limited and limiting way of looking at the world. They do not represent everything there is, nor everything that is important, nor can they.

Beyond this: Dollars and Numbers are creatures of humanity. They are unknown to butterflies and chipmunks.

Numbers state relationships: this number of X is more than this number. All mathematics are ways of stating relationships: + – * / Σ ∆ ∏ √ ³. In this way, math does give us a language for the real, but it is only a map, not the territory. X numbers of people below the poverty line does not convey the tears and bone tiredness and invisibility. For that we need a song “Cellophane” in a movie Chicago. Our numbers cannot for me express what it is like to be looked right through, but my experience tells me.

Numbers do more than collect large groups of similars: they tend to tell us the similars are sames, when they are not. They remove the experience of the muscles and emotions and soul and spirit.

If we begin to think that our math is the only real, we have restricted our thinking, made it rigid, as Bohm says.

Beyond this: is it also an imaginary realm? It can be.

Which is more real? That may not be the best question, for they are both real. However, Which is more fundamental, more at the base? Which is the territory beyond the map?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 13th, 2009 | No Comments »

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