- The Sum of Our Discontent
"The Sum of Our Discontent" is a
nonfiction book by David Boyle. It was published byTexere in 2001. Thetagline and theme of the book is "Why numbers make usirrational ".Premise
The author's premise is that humans have been trying to improve the
quality of life andhappiness by using numbers to count an increasing amount of things, and while it has worked in many ways, it has also had a cost in sanitizing the representation of existence by trying to reduce everything to numbers, and has not often been very effective. This tension is very similar to the one described in the classic "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution " ofC.P. Snow .ynopsis
The first chapter is entitled "A Short History of Counting". It describes the progression of numbers from being considered divine in early history to their present day
pragmatism . It opens in 1904Berlin with the story of a counting horse namedClever Hans , who was, to the relief of all, proved bypsychologist Oskar Pfungst to not really be able to count. This fit in with the earlier opinion ofNicholas of Cusa , a cardinal who was a pioneer of quantification, that counting is what separates man from animals.Boyle then covers the history of counting in detail, starting with when numbers were considered to be divine and were the exclusive domain of the
accountant -priests of theAssyrian Empire , then going on toPythagoras and theAncient Greeks who believed numbers represented theharmony ofnature .Legend has it that Pythagoras may have studied with theMagi and been influenced by them after having been held captive inBabylon . Even a later practical andscientific mathematician such asHeinrich Hertz agreed with this natural significance of numbers. Boyle then goes to themedieval fascination and obsession withclock s that are thought to have possibly been invented byGerbert of Aurillac , amonk . The long and fascinating history of theabacus also turns up time and time again in counting history.Luca Pacioli 's invention of double-entryaccounting further brought us to the present day situation of numbers being used to measure everything.The next chapters tell the stories of various historical figures and how they relate to the book's concept. They are all good stories; many of them focus on the
unintended consequence s of the ideas of their creators, specificallyThomas Malthus andJohn Maynard Keynes , who have both become known as measurers, but were really more interested in unmeasurable concepts. It all starts with eccentricJeremy Bentham who tried to measure happiness, then progresses to hisutilitarian followersJohn Stuart Mill and Thomas Malthus. One problem with counting that became evident from this era was that it gave no solutions or causality, just data. Next he describes thepolitical self-esteem movement started byCalifornia politicianJohn Vasconcellos in consultation with his friendJack Canfield , author of the popular self-esteemself-help book "Chicken Soup for the Soul ". A lot of Vasconcellous' ideas came from theEsalen Institute in the mountains nearBig Sur , whereAbraham Maslow 's hierarchy of human needs theory was popularized. Boyle then tells the interesting story ofFrederick Taylor and his extremely number-orientedscientific management . He then covers theethical investingfad , an attempt to measure by more than numbers that itself falls victim to counting irrationality. Next is the story ofeconomist John Maynard Keynes.The chapter on "New Indicators" describes attempts to replace
GNP with broader measures such as theIndex of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW ) that attempt to account for full environmental costs. That index was popularized in a 1994 article inThe Atlantic Monthly byClifford Cobb about his new [http://www.rprogress.org/ Redefining Progress]think tank .Hazel Henderson 's 1981 book "Politics for the Solar Age" was responsible for sparking the creation of theAir Pollution Index , one of manyquality of life measurements that are now proliferating. An interesting point is that such measurements are often most meaningful if created and made by the people who care about them.The next chapter covers the story of
Edgar Cahn [http://nejl.wcl.american.edu/cahnarticle.html] who came up with the time dollar as an outgrowth of his battles with proponents ofcost-benefit analysis but more importantly from his desire to make people feel valuable. The initial time dollar projects began in 1987 with a grant from theRobert Wood Johnson Foundation .The book ends appropriately enough with a chapter named "The bottom-line". Boyle summarizes how the practice of trying to measure everything (which used to go by the name
pantometry but is now so common that the word has fallen out of use) can rob us of our humanity. Measuring is very necessary, but so is intuition andstorytelling , which can often express points much better than numbers can. He thinks we should try to bridge the gap between the eastern and western view of numbers, which have been in conflict since Pythagoras. He ends with a relevantquote fromPrince Charles from hismillennium broadcast on theBBC . Boyle's bottom line is that measuring does not in itself improve anything.External links
* [http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/29.html The beginning of new managerialism's end]
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