January 8, 2014

Dear Angelynn,

It's a new year, so I should be scratching out a "13" on my homework and notes for at least a month. Except I don't usually have a problem with the year, it's the month that gets me. Although, with that being said last Novemeber I distinctly remember writing "2012" on my paper and for some reason I'm finding myself wanting to write "2011" on the top of my paper. And I don't even think that was an incredibly good year (or an incredibly bad one). It's just weird.

Time is a weird concept.

But actually, I'm not here to babble about time. Well... not really.

I'm actually kind of concrened on this quantity vs. quality debate, and technically, time is a number. It quantifies our perception of aging and changing and growing. It quanitifies a quality, doesn't it?

So I'm sitting here in a world where quality is supposed to be valued, and yet everything is measured in numbers. Quality is measured in numbers, because apparently we, as humans, have a hard time deciphering anything without being able to put some sort of measurement up to it. There are scales and numbers and letters that attempt to code and sort us as if we're some sort of algebraic equation. We are to amount to something, because we don't understand how to mean anything.

And for a world that seemingly hates math (or at least the majority of us. I'm really kind of neutral on the whole thing) we use numbers and symbols a lot.

Intelligence is measured in SAT and ACT scores. Colleges only want the smart people, and by smart, they want the people who know the ropes and tricks of pointless questions which seem almost trivial. (I don't know, maybe I just really really really don't want to have to study for that SAT test that I have in two weeks.) You're not doing "good;" you're doing "well." And you better know what a psuedopod is. This is the English section, you say? Why are you throwing in scientific words, you ask? Any intellectual can properly define and use such a word in a contextual sentence. Obviously. (Still miffed about having to study scientific words for last years vocab tests, because there is no possible way to contextually use chromatography in a sentence.)

And I guess if you don't have an IQ of 140, you're not a genius. You have a GPA of 3.5? It's not because you were lazy or you have other stuff to be doing, clearly, you're just not as smart as you could be. All the smart people have 4.0's. Obviously, that's what GPA's are for. And letter grades. Because intelligence is perfectlly quantifiable and brain farts don't exist. Every piece of information I ever look at should be permanently be imprinted in my brain, or else. I'm just stupid.

And these quantitative traits extend out of school and intelligence, because it's not just intelligence that's targetted. Talent is based on numbers as well. I can understand why swimming or running is timed, because it's really the only plausible way to measure speed. Speed is after all, measured by quantity. But again, point values are assigned and it doesn't really matter how hard you work or how passionate you are. All that matters is preformance.

Watty awards are based on reads and votes (occasionally talent, yes.) But let's not get started on the 7 million reads fan-fictions have, so they must be good and grasp the basic concepts of grammar. Usually, (nearly always) I'm disappointed.

Success is measured in money. Happiness is the same way, sometimes. Or it's measured by the boyfriend you have or have not. (But maybe that's just the feeling I get from social media. We hardly get excited over the trivial stuff- only the biggest and the best.)

And as if this isn't enough, numbers have only been thrown in our face again to measure something that should only be qualitative: beauty. If you aren't a size 0; you're not pretty enough. If you don't have Barbie's real-life measurements (forget that this is physically impossible, if you're not here, you're not good enough): 36-18-33, well, that's what you're aiming for.

To me, if beauty is something that needs to be measured, if some sort of scale is needed to calcuate the aesthetics, we have no understanding of beauty at all. It's measured by emotion not numbers, and I wonder if beauty even exists- or if it should exist for that matter.

The thing with this modern day world, is that even though (some) of us hate numbers, we still use them a heck of a lot. I'm not even sure, Angelynn, if we even know how to identify the quality of something without numbers of sorts. Seriously, how many "out of ten, what would you rate it?" have you seen in your lifetime? And what about five star reviews? Can we even preceive quality without quanitifying it? 

Angelynn, as a person who wants to identify solely with the quality of life and the generally good quality of human beings, it seems almost pointless to let numbers define me and my life. The part that I should be focusing on is how good I feel to actually sit down and commit to something; how good it actually feels to accomplish something. Because although people might not be able to preceive quality in others- they sure as heck can identify it in themselves.

xx

Angela