UWC2101D: Selves and Cities

Avoiding The Pitfalls of Quantification

By Yeo Hwee Pey

In "The Metropolis and Mental Life" (1903), George Simmel argues that the money economy has created an obsession "with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations." On the one hand, this quantification is surely a good thing, for it brings about "a new precision, a certainty in the definition of identities and differences, an unambiguousness in agreements and arrangements." Knowledge of quantities consequently facilitates categorisation that could help us cope more efficiently with what Simmel refers to as "the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli" in the metropolis. On the other hand, what is worrying about this phenomenon is that "money is concerned only with what is common to all: it asks for the exchange value, it reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much?" This suggests that the proliferation of quantitative categorisation in modern society also involves neglecting the qualities that help define an unique individual.

An illustration of how our preoccupation with quantities might be undesirable is found in an anecdote in Antoine de Saint Exupery's best seller, The Little Prince. The observant narrator laments how grown-ups never ask him any important questions about the qualities of his new found friend--like the sound of his voice or the games he enjoys. Instead, they demand information concerning quantities: "How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much does his father make?" (15). The basis of categorisation in the adult world becomes limited to mere knowledge of quantities of people and things, which explains why the narrator in The Little Prince is scornful of how "only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him" (16). Simmel's point is that this obsession with quanitites will "displace the genuine personal colorations and incomparabilities" of individuals. Our existence as unique human beings is under siege, by this account, because such quantification severely "hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability."

Simmel does not indicate how such a grown-up displacement of qualities might be avoided. But Virginia Woolf does. In "Solid Objects," Woolf's protagonist, John, finds a large irregular lump of glass; he scrutinises its qualities of colour, texture and shape very closely: "When the sand coating was wiped off, a green tint appeared. It was a lump of glass, so thick as to be almost opaque; the smoothing of the sea had completely worn off any edge or shape, so that it was impossible to say whether it had been bottle, tumbler, or window-pane" (80). He painstakingly collects items like this one because he finds "cause for wonder and speculation in the differences of qualities and designs" (84). These qualities make him appreciative of the fact that it is "unlikely that there should be another [similar item] in existence" (83). John thus avoids following the norm of labelling such items as household refuse to be thrown in the neighbourhood waste land where "such objects often occurred there --- thrown away, of no use to anybody, shapeless, discarded" (82).

John's behavior is childlike. Woolfe attributes John's act of collecting the lump to an impulse that "too, may have been the impulse which leads a child to pick up one pebble on a path strewn with them" (81). Furthermore, while burrowing in the sand looking for objects, "his eyes lost their intensity, or rather the background of thought and experience which gives an inscrutable depth to the eyes of grown people disappeared, leaving only the clear transparent surface, expressing nothing but wonder, which the eyes of young children display." Here, Woolfe describes children's eyes as having a clear transparent surface, a transparency that is eroded during the growing up years when experiences accumulate and build layer upon layer on that surface. This image is parallel to the point made by the narrator of The Little Prince: children perceive people and things as they are, without the urge to quantify and categorise. While growing up, that is, we begin to suffer from distorted and possibly deficient perceptions, exemplified in our continual evaluation by quantitative values. Hence, by embracing children as our role models, we could possible avoid subsuming qualitative distinctions of people and things under quantitative categories.

Yet, it is ironic how John, with his child-like qualities to shield him against quantifying objects, could not defend himself against being quantified by society. According to such conventional categorisation, John was regarded as a fool because he had given up a lucrative political career to pursue a mindless interest in collecting pieces of garbage. People measured him on a quantitative scale and went on to discard him like a piece of social garbage: "People gave up visiting him. He was too silent to be worth asking to dinner. He never talked to anyone about his serious ambitions; their lack of understanding was apparent in their behaviour"(85).

However, our sense of bitterness at the injustice John suffered is counter-balanced with a subtle sweetness. Our treatment and evaluation of John, whose fate was unfortunately not much different from his objects of desire, is reflective of his own treatment and evaluation of his collection of items. He did not evaluate their quantitative elements and categorised them as pieces of garbage. Instead, he learnt to appreciate their qualities and the subtle distinctions that characterised each one of them. As discerning readers, likewise, we do not judge John based on accepted quantitative conventions. Instead, we learnt to appreciate his qualities and seek to better understand his interest in collecting those supposed pieces of junk.

Through this skilful literary mechanism, Woolfe empowers us to salvage ourselves by salvaging John, who had earlier salvaged those pieces of garbage. Entranced by the story and forgetful of our adult categories, we become like children, and are able to appreciate John for who he is. By appreciating his qualities--thus salvaging him--we have already begun to salvage ourselves from the pitfalls of quantification and categorisation. This enlightenment evokes a sense of joy and power in us, which is probably what John felt when he was "delighting in the sense of power and benignity which such an action [keeping the item on his mantelpiece] confers, and believing that the heart of the stone leaps with joy when it sees itself chosen"(81). John's heart too would leap with joy were he to see himself occupying a special place on the mantelpiece in our hearts.