Feeling numbers (Our too-Roman numerals)

The facts – as they pertain to our nation and its economy – stream fast in front of us.  A relentless torrent of good facts.  Knowledge, numbers and trends.  They say that some may see the stats of a baseball game and see the game played in their mind’s eye. The numbers tell the story.

And it is great that these facts are so readily at hand.  I mean, we don’t live in a totalitarian society, where one may not even have access to the numbers.  Do we take this for granted, this wonderful availability of tell-tale numbers?

E.g.: we have Piketty and his work.  Important numbers.  At what point do the numbers make one act?  What is the number in any given category that makes one go forth into the street with revolutionary purpose and fervor?  Piketty provides some eye-openers – and he was widely reported on.

Ah, the numbers must be felt.  The number describing inequality comes second to the lived experience of inequality.  Yet ghettoized in our “media enclaves and technological enclaves and geographical enclaves” (minute 55) our reactions are isolated, pigeonholed.  If we could read the common language of numbers we could perhaps overcome our insular states and realize our common potential.  In the end it seems another story of hope dashed by the unfelt façade of the too-Roman numerals.