Mathematics is a funny science. We often think of it as the last bastion of good old reliable logic. That is, mathematics is often perceived as a dispassionate science. There is no movement to save endangered unsolvable equations. There are no picketers to prohibit future mathematical research and there are no math or geometry bars peppering the landscape so that mathophiles can feed their addictions by the cup full. Yet, mathematics quantifies and predicts some of the most irrational and emotional human (particularly western) behaviors. It knows and can predict the behavior of the consumer. The bell curve shows us that upon introduction, the population at large generally rejects a thing, a phrase or a concept. Over time, with continued exposure, whether that thing is good or bad it will gain acceptance by the masses. Over even more time, it will loose favor and only a few die hards will hang on to it. What mathematics does not tell us is why the behavior exists and what triggers the changes. Okay, I can accept a natural life cycle. The problem I have comes at the peak usage point and just before it. Why can't we just say, I have had enough, before something becomes over used, over done or just plain abused? Why are so few people willing to grapple with the idea that the planet is not a ball of never ending resources before we are in an imminent life-threatening crisis? Why can't we pay enough attention to our children before they become corrupted youths? Why are we compelled to consume the last bite? These questions are one in the same. Only the context is different. In the 70's, someone had this brilliant idea to put glass balls on either end of a string and make a game out of using inertia to cause the balls to slam together over and under the hand holding the string in rapid succession. Where I lived, they were called click clacks. They were eventually banned because frequently enough, the glass balls shattered. Children were seriously injured. Who couldn't see that one coming? The balls were GLASS! Everyone saw it coming. Why did they become so popular with the obvious consequence so, well, obvious? Because, they were pretty and the danger was too thrilling to resist. The rising anxiety as the clacking became louder as the balls struck harder and harder. The titillation of waiting for the loudest crash of the balls and waiting to see if the glass really would splinter into the crowd and onto the user was breathtaking. Sales were at their zenith just after the potential danger was announced and up to when they were banned. Either beauty or danger by itself can drive us beyond reason. Together they are a compelling pair. We are told all of our lives to be ourselves. How many people who say that believe it? Relatively speaking, no one does. Proof that no one does is in the billion dollar cosmetics industry. Proof is in the billion dollar diet industry. Proof is in the success of Brad Pitt, Sean Connery and Humphrey Bogart movies. Beautiful men do uncommonly well even when they lack any discernible talent. Bankable men are beautiful and dangerous. There are strong indications that our desire for the beautiful and the dangerous is hardwired in our genetic coding. I can accept that; besides, I have seen almost every Sean Connery movie ever made and I know why. Still, we like to consider ourselves superior to the beasts because we can choose to override our genetic programming with our intellect. If intellect and compassion are the gifts that make us reign supreme over the land and the beasts, then because of intellect and compassion we are surely charged with being good stewards. We learned that in the first Spiderman movie. You remember, when Peter Parker's uncle tells him with great power comes great responsibility. Surely, we had a way of knowing this before Spiderman. The preponderance of the evidence says, no. Women have let the media tell them they are ugly and imperfect, that they need to be continously "fixed". Cosmetic companies offer women a solution for this condition, makeup to use everyday that will slowly poison them. Women are the givers of life and nurturing. They are inherently beautiful - no matter what they look like. Inside women know this and still they let the media transform that knowledge into a small imperceptible light inside them. In too many women, that light is extinguished altogether. (See anorexia, bulimia and every woman who makes a living working a pole.) We let corporations make us fear odor so much that when they offer us cleansers and perfumes made of cheap toxins, we take it. No questions asked. We allow limited resources to be squandered on archaic Pavlovian responses to fictitious threats to our emotional and social survival. In the mean time, we let the true threats to our physiological survival slip into the darkness. Where they become the bogeyman. The bogeyman is a slave to corrupt and powerful masters. He is trotted out at their whim for their own best interest. After serving the highest bidder, the bogeyman returns to the shadows. The bogeyman lives in the milk of women at the Arctic Circle because of the air and ocean currents. The toxic brew they nurse their children with comes from the waste of the industrialized world. They are the canaries in the coalmines and their songs have been silenced. The bogeyman lives in our prepubescent children whose bodies are developing faster than we have seen before. Could it be the ingestion of meat laced with growth hormones? When I was a child, I didn't know anyone with a food allergy. Today, you can't take 2 steps without tripping over someone with a food allergy. Maybe, they aren't really allergic to the food. Maybe, they are really allergic to the herbicides, pesticides and other concoctions that come co-mingled with the food. The bogeyman lives in wars that kill our children over scarce resources and the power to allocate them. In short, (I know it's a little late for that) I think it's time we as a culture say, when not because the next best thing has arrived but because we have had enough. P.S: If you're looking for some sexy math, check out M theory. |
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