Why are we obsessed with numbering and objectifying?

I am 543654769. I’m also 000889–0029. You might know me better as +420 731 731 556? To universities I’m hopefully all 6’s and 7’s. Most of you may also know me as Katya.

We’re in a society obsessed with numbers. No longer simply identified by our name, interests, human traits, and behavior. Why? It’s easier to label someone in a ranking and make sense and order out of the 7 billion people on this planet today. Its easier to objectify opinions about women and men — I’d give them a 10/10 or damn! 90–60–90! But don’t worry; my speech isn’t about feminism this year surprisingly.

Lets look at an example most of us can relate to. We are all numbers in this school. What’s your student ID? Grade point average? Predicted score? Yes. We are objectified and numbered in school. Is that ISPs fault? No! Everyone does it and to some degree, it makes sense. But is it fair to say that you’re a 7 and he’s only a 3? And base someone’s entire intelligence and life upon a number? Well I certainly hope that you all think it isn’t fair.

What about a countries citizens? We are numbers. How many Katerina Kowalski’s are there? I don’t know — but at least I know that my number is different to the rest. Does that mean that I’m unique? Or does it just mean I’m a series of digits in a computer for identification purposes. Whether it’s my open card, or student ID, or IB score or passport number or insurance. All of which are artificial identifications. We are all just ‘another citizen.’

Our society is obsessed with putting order and making sense by labeling us as number for different purposes. As our planet grows and develops — our categorization and organization is dumbed down. Numbers are simply easier to deal with.

We see numbers not only in classification but also in statistics. They’re also a way of making things easier. Want to know what percentage of Europeans are unemployed? Look it up, it’s instant.

But what this does is it begins to take away the humanity of those stories and meanings behind the statistics. After all, they are numbers, aren’t they? Statistics are making these issues more faceless in a world that needs humanity more than ever. We know the numbers but do we necessarily know what those people are going through?

Statistics bombard us in the news, with rapes, shootings, plane crashes, terror attacks. We look statistics up whether it is the number of cancer patients, number of people in a university, number of refugees in geographical areas, number of diabetes sufferers. We seem to be condensing the humanity and story into a faceless number.

The mass of refugees and migrants coming to Europe are not numbers and statistics. They are living and breathing humans with a conscience and stories and problems and goals and desires.

Once we make something a number, we take away the meaning and humanity behind it. We stop looking at stories and human experiences but proportions and ratios. This is how we have become numbers. We live in a world where humanity and putting a face to those statistics has become more important than ever yet we seem to be doing exactly the opposite.

Yet, despite this objectification our world is still filled with concepts and ideas and emotions that we will never be able to quantify. There are still things we cannot put numbers on. You may attempt to rate beauty on a scale, but is it possible to objectify it? How about love? Emotion and our uniqueness? Intelligence and knowledge? — and no, IQ tests do not count (that’s a whole other speech).

All of this is what makes us truly human. It puts a face to the number and statistic.

We seem to think bias is bad, yet it creates interest in society — not just plain numbers without a meaning and opinion. It adds opinion and debate and sparks discussion. We cannot strip topics of their bias and make them a simple number.

These are the basis to our humanity. Numbers are the exact opposite.

My love towards my family and friends can’t be expressed in a number. I can’t possibly show those emotions in words, thus numbers are completely irrelevant.

We’re still fascinated by love, death, jealously, greed, anger, and happiness. These are things that as much as we try to express through numbers, we cannot.

I think it is time that we stop trying to simplify the wonderful chaos of humanity. In the midst of atrocities and conflict in the 21st century, bringing back humanity will help replace the bad ‘inhumane’ chaos with the chaos of wonderful humanity. Start thinking about the meaning behind those numbers that identify you and put them in words instead. Next time you see a statistic, try and find someone’s story that is a part of that statistic and grasp humane side to the topic.

There is a number we are all familiar with at the moment. That number is 129. Yet, we must stop thinking about it as a number but rather as individuals that had a story and a family and a life. Individuals whose life was drastically cut short by a senseless act of terror.

We are not numbers and neither are our stories, so lets stop being them.