Leaping into the fray

Time and money eh? Ok I'll bite...

The thing that impresses me about these dual deities is that they both are uber quantifiers. They allow us to take fuzzy things and assign numbers to them. With money for example allows us to compare cars ($7,995) to cabbage ($1.75). Time has a similar function allowing us to quantify a full days work, or a relationship.

As I've read, quantify things is ultimately very important to our (modern) understanding of information and ultimately knowledge, from physics to economics. To use a crude example I can tell you about a painting by telling you that it took 2 years to complete and is worth 10 million dollars. One may even extrapolate that the painter is worth 5 million a year and compare him to a mediocre starting shortstop.

But what does it mean to compare a shortstop and painter? Do we know anything meaningful about them when we know they each command $5M for a year of work (or are worth over 100 librarians)? In the end I propose that time and money are revered in our society (that exists at latitude =41.997186 and longitude=-87.66653) b/c they allow us to reduce complicated and difficult questions of value and meaning and a reality that exists of unique moments, people, and things into a simple rubric that can be readily shared. They allow us to reduce the many to one. But things like beauty or goodness that "don't have price" are usually left out of the conversation.

So why are we so uncomfortable with the uniqueness of the things that surround us? Why do we inevitably need to organize and compare things? What is the power of numbers that is so compelling and useful but also unsettling?