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| KOKOU AMEFIA | |||||||||
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| ENGLISH 2 | |||||||||
| The despotism of numbers | |||||||||
| 6/28/1914, Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated. 7/28/1914,Serbia declares war to Austria. These events will mark the beginning of the Second World War. 6/28/1919, peace is signed. The world harmony has totally changed.Total cost: allied: $125,690,477,000, central power:60,643,160,000. Casualties: More than 37,508,686 which is equal to 9 times the population of Togo. The Second World War (1939-1945) was even worst. The number of destruction was humongous. 6/9/1982, I was born in Togo, West Africa. So many things happened after that date. 9/11/2001, one of the bloodiest attacks on America:25,000 to 35,000 initially believed killed; by 4th day, death toll downgraded to estimated 5,000 to 10,000. 19 hijackers were involved in four airplanes takeovers (http://www.e-venthorizon.net/main/wtc-statsums.html). 2 of the tallest towers in the world were destroyed. This produces an automatic reaction of countries in the world. 1,000,000s Of dollars are invested into a ?War against terrorism?. A lot more things happen that I did not mention. You may wonder why I m talking about all these events. Can we find a logic that explains why things like that happen? Certainly not. Why does our society even care about that these facts? I call the answer to this question the despotism of numbers. I m not trying to explain anything or predict what might happen, I?m just looking at these events in a way no one ever did before or at least in a slightly different way. Before introducing my point, I would like my reader to know that I had all my intellectual faculties when I wrote this. I really do believe that things happen because number exists. | |||||||||
| My idea is quite simple. We all still remember these events, but no one knows that my grandmother lost her last brown tooth when I was 10. Not even my mother. If she had had 2000 teeth, my poor grandmother would have been remembered. Everybody would have noticed the lost of this last cute brown tooth, even you, my friendly reader. We give importance to events because they deal with too small or too big numbers, or sometimes, just unusual numbers. The entire cycle of life, the whole human history, would have been different if there was no numbers. Can you imagine a world without 1, 2, 3 et cetera? I certainly cannot! | |||||||||
| The English language really reflects the importance that numbers have in our life. Why do I have to say, ? I am 19 ?instead of ? I have 19 ?? I thought about that when I was 10 in my first Basic English class. My life was fast. I had to change country every 3 years. I really was not given enough time to ask myself who I was. I almost have no memory of where I was from. Numbers have done a great job in my life. The ruined it and then build it and when they had enough of the changes, they destroy everything and build new again. I wanted to have big numbers for the time I had to spend in a country, but I never had that occasion, numbers wanted to make themselves small for me. | |||||||||
| Numbers allowed us to evaluate things, stuffs, matters, you can call it life if u prefer.� When I said that to some friends I was living with when I was fifteen, they told me that ?things? could have been evaluated in many ways. I had no other argument but the fact that nothing in this world is independent of numbers. ?I got ya!!? he screamed! And Afshin happily added: ? time can be evaluated using sand?. What Afshin did not understand, was that in order to be able to measure the same time over and over, we have to use numbers to evaluate the amount of sand needed for 1 minute, 4 minutes, etc.� Having made this assumption, and if you agree with me, you certainly do, I feel ready to give a reason for every phenomena in this world. I was saying that I was 15. At this age I could not really say where I was from, because my parent job was requiring them to change country very often. Nothing very exiting has happened in my life because I was educated to consider everything as being part of a long logical cycle. I was thought to evaluate possibilities and to take decision based on the facts and experiences shared with me. | |||||||||
| I remember talking to my friends about this ?suppose magic? of numbers. One of then dressed with his nice white shirt, his new glasses that makes him look like a pimp of MIT, turned back to me and asked how I could possibly define love using numbers. Carl has always been passionate about everything in his life. I had no immediate answer because one of the characteristics of my person was that I also believe in love, ?everything is love?� (The Moulin Rouge, 2001). I was saddened by the fact that one of the most important components of my life was going to be defined using numbers. I turned back to myself, and I really cannot think about a way we could define love by using numbers! I did not want to. Love was one of the biggest manifestations of the theory of numbers. What does people in love say? They say things like: ?I feel like him and me are 1?meaning he is �, 2/3, or anything u want of him or her. ?he definitely part of my life?, once again numbers are used to describe and separate things. The only time I believed that love existed is when I was 16, 3 years from now. I was caring for her and so was she for me, I really pleasured that ?feeling inside?(Moulin rouge) someone else than my parent was caring for me. But soon I realized that I have not been on earth long enough to conquer my liberty and care about someone the way I was doing. She had to go 1000miles away. What have I done to numbers? | |||||||||
| My life has not been what people call easy. Not only because I had to deal with people of different horizons that has a completely different view on what I do, but also because I have not really wanted to be social. ?You are always ambiguous in your thinking was saying Elyes, whenever I start to criticize society?. I believe society force us to obey the ruling of numbers. In our society, everything is about coming the first, having the most, our social egotisms are nourished by the fact that we can label everything with a number. We say we are rich because we have 1,000,000 million of dollars in our bank account#00023434565 and the same amount in all the other 4 of mine. We are tired because we have to spend 12 hours working. We are sleepy, because we woke up at 7 am to go to English class. As you can see, in order to make our sayings understandable by people of our society, we have to explain everything with numbers. One of the greatest moments of my life was when I was 18, my father told me to buy everything I wanted at his expense because my GPA was 3.5/4.what did I buy? You will never know! | |||||||||
| ����������� The theory of numbers is nothing new to our society. Elyes, the same Elyes, who happen to be a very fervent religious man, recently asked me how can God, ?with upper case G? he outlined, ?how can God be explained with numbers??� ? Elyes, you know, I am not a big believer! Why are you asking that??. ?Prove me the existence or inexistence of God, with upper case G please, with numbers and I will believe that theory of yours.? It was a big challenge, a very big challenge. If I failed to give good argument to Elyes, may you my reader erase all that I have said above from your mind, for such an assumption could not be true if there exist even one exception to it! First, let us bring the battle on a different ground. The question is not whether God exist or not for such thing can be very easily explained by the fact that people have data (dates, letters, etc) of historical facts that happened 2002, 1400, and so on years before that make them believe that. The true question is how this data are numerically linked between each other to make people like Elyes believer? Not an easy task! | |||||||||
| ����������� | |||||||||
| One of the most original characteristics of human beings is this limitless desire to know the how of things. When I was younger, I wanted to know how I was born. 5 years later, I was trying to find out how my date was managing to stay away for days when I was home missing him. 5 additional years later, I understood him and now I m trying to figure out how I can make million of dollars with lots of honesty and the slightest effort!. Men, (noticed that I used upper case M, which means men and women) have always tried to know how the become what they are. There is lots of theory about the evolution of our race, but like my old grandfather ?the one married with the women who was not remembered because she has no 2000 teeth- always says,? At the end of ignorance, there is God? with ?upper case G or small, make it what u like Elyes. I think grandfather has heard this from someone else?. How does what I just said relate to numbers? The problem is that human wants to know their roots, their origins, where they come from. There is nothing wrong at that. God in lots of religions is infinite: infinitely good, infinitely wise, etc. In most of the religions also, it is said that God made us, you, me and all the others. I have nothing against that fact for the simple reason that it mathematically perfectly goes with what I said about numbers. God is infinite and he or she, ?does it matter to you, Elyes, that God it a he or she? made us. Which mean the infinite made us. It is not by simple coincidence that the set of real numbers R, happen to have infinite elements. ?does this argument satisfied you Elyes?? , ?I m quite satisfied , but finish what you have to say!?, ?oh well, I will, but very quick, because I only have 7 minutes left before my� English class begin?. | |||||||||
| 7days, 17th power in the way some religious book are written, 12 months in a year, 12 apostles, these are numbers and terms that recurrently appears in lots of religious book.� Did what is written in these books really happen? I do not know! But what is to be noticed is the way numbers are used in religious books to gain the confidence of people who happen to read them. It is just like there was something mystic about those numbers. Why did they pick numbers to refer to those fundamental of religions?? I don not. But there is probably a numerical genius behind that. ?I have to go, don?t want to be 5 minute late for class. But I could not leave without telling you what this whole argument was about!? | |||||||||
| Numbers rules our life, it nothing new, even if I partly responsibility for discovering this fact. We cannot denied that whatever we do, life, love, everyday activities, even in our religious rituals, we do things because we want to break or consolidate the despotism of numbers. But let us not be wrong about something, Men are free! This freedom allowed us to choose how we want our life to be, add numerical to life to be precise. Once we have chosen our numbers, there is no turning back! We enter a cycle of addition, division etc, that control our life. My own life if you have not noticed yet was not an exception to this rule. Are numbers what make event unpredictable? I believe so. I also believe that numbers are what make us give importance to some event like those I have introduced at the beginning of this argument. ?I have to go Elyes! don?t let numbers rule your life? Oh my god! I have 1 minute left before the beginning of my English class?. | |||||||||
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