OPINION
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We live in a world of numbers. Talk to Google and they will tell you that mathematics is the new sexy career qualification of choice. Talk of Apple computers seems less about creativity and more about numbers. Their keynotes begin with staggering numbers of products sold.
Of course a moment's reflection will reveal that Elton John is to blame for this. What else would you call a live album recorded on November 17, 1970, but 17.11.70? Of course, if you are 33 years of age and are about to put out your 21st album, there really can be no other title than the creative 21 at 33. Not since the Beatle's Taxman has a musical offering contrived to sound like a tax return.
While pop music has long been reduced to a consideration of the top 40, other art forms tend only to escape the rarified confines of the opinion pages when there is a story about how much Damien Hurst's dead parrot sold for. How much? But it's a dead parrot, it has ceased to be!
Art stories (in other words: how much money some punter has paid for two coats of Dulux and a gilt frame) rarely trouble the steady flow of house price stories. Not house stories, house price stories. Its about the numbers. On the moving picture television box, renovation shows are all the go, but only if the purpose is to see who can make the most money. Art sometimes also gets a gig on mainstream television. For instance the Antiques Greed Show, where where house burglars and granny killers show up with their loot with the sole purpose of getting a valuation. The experts on the show pad out their few minutes of celebrity with some woffle about provenance, or occasionally some gentle questions about why the "collector" has so much Nazi memorabilia, but no one is listening until they reveal how much the "collector's" victims claimed on the insurance after their recent burglary.
Health was once a straightforward, numberless proposition. Everything in moderation. But oh no, moderation needs quantifying. In the past health and efficiency was a minority interest for exhibitionists, naturists and perverts. Not any more. Health is big business because the numbers people have taken over to such an extent that Apple has recently joined the fray, adding health counting apps to its phones. It has even managed to produce something it calls a watch but which is really a pestering health accountant. It nags you in 10 or more different languages to stop enjoying the aesthetic pleasure of a painting in a gallery and get scuttling through the rooms fast enough to get your heart rate higher than Francis Bacon painting a nude.
Life itself has succumbed to numbers. We go from Apgar tests to the ATAR. From taxes to T-cell counts to the tomb. And it doesn't finish there. Funerals used to be celebrations. My Lancashire grandmother regaled me with tales of be-clogged jolly wakes beyond the cobblestones of her street. Now grief abounds at funerals as the poor relatives try to come to terms with the proportions of the undertaker's bill.
Maybe the cost of funerals explains our obsession with longevity. We have replaced the rat race with a slow bicycle race. Whomever comes last is the winner. Forget the breadth and depth, measure the length. In a where numbers have become our masters, Google is right: master numbers and you will have a job for life. But please remember occasionally to look beyond the numbers at the beauty of life.
Jim Bright is Professor of Career Education and Development at ACU and owns Bright and Associates. Email opinion@jimbright.com. Follow @DrJimBright.
