In John Seabrook’s recounting of his experience at Skywalker Ranch, he professes that “there was no denying that a transaction was involved somewhere along the line. A relationship between The New Yorker’s brand and Star Wars’ brand had developed, and it was in The New Yorker’s advantage to cultivate it.” But as we advance as a more consumerist society, couldn’t every action be considered a transaction? Especially considering the many forces at play behind how brands are established and viewed by consumers, it seems every action we make can be considered a consumption of, an indirect use of, or feedback of a brand. Something of value (and everything can eventually be assigned a monetary value—money allows us a system to reduce “qualitative determinations to quantitative ones”) is always being exchanged. But quantifying everything is part of human nature. Whether it’s money, time, or scientific phenomena, it’s part of our DNA to quantify and one of the reasons we’re such an advanced species on this earth.
Is quantifying such a terrible thing? I guess we could all theorize on where the world will end up. On an optimistic note, maybe our ability to quantify everything and to break down our world into basic units and transactions will allow us to live our lives more responsibly. We could put a price tag on every action we make. Maybe we would feel more accountable for our actions and the effect we have on this world. But then again, humans are more reactionary—we don’t have the best record in correcting our behavior to be more preventative—and this will probably catch up to us someday. (Wow, that sounded preachy. That’ll probably cost me a few seconds of a potential reader’s attention, which could range between a few cents and few dollars).
I see why the question of quantifying really being bad comes up, but I'm going to have to say that it is in fact a bad thing. Maybe this is my fear of my old algebra teacher and numbers in general resurfacing, but I think that quantifying everything in our world devalues things that don't have an obvious number. Would you categorize "high-cult" activities, such as going to the opera, as a higher numerical value than going to a comparatively "low-cult" activity, say a basketball game or even (dare I say) a mainstream movie. Maybe this seems obvious in the quantifying scheme of things; clearly the high-cult activity has higher value. But the real world is not so concrete. If one was to go to the movie or basketball game as part of family bonding versus being dragged to the opera on a school field trip, couldn't the low-cult activity be given more value? Clearly then one of the flaws of quantifying the universe is the inability to objectively value everything. How do you slap a price tag on something you can't see? If you can some how rationalize a value for the intangible, what is to say the next person who comes along won't have a completely different value for the object/experience/place/thing. I guess no one said that the value had to be the same for every person, but I hope we can all agree that things get pretty muddled.
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