Just cogs in a very big machine
I was reading today about a woman who killed her two daughters...drowned them in order to "save them" from other unspeakable horrors that the voices in her head were telling her were about to be dealt to her and them. So, it seemed reasonable to her, at the time, to send them on to her God, rather then leave them to whatever horrors awaited them in this world. She then attempted to kill herself via stabbing, but failed. She was later interviewed and could only say that she wished it all had never happened because she missed her girls so much.
At this, I got a little choked-up as I thought of my own girls and what it would do to me if they were yanked out of my life. I glanced upward and my gaze swept across the view from the 21st floor of my workplace. I have a rather commanding view of the Galleria and most of west Houston from where I sit and it occurred to me that it was impossible to try to comprehend the amount of humanity contained in the scope of my gaze at that instant. Furthermore, to try to scale that to the city, let alone the country or the world, would be fruitless. Our tiny minds aren't able to actually comprehend the millions of souls and what those kinds of numbers mean to a system as complex as humanity.
In today's world, we bandy-about the term "million" as if it were nothing, but most of us are incapable of actually wrapping our minds around what the term means. When I was in 5th grade, a student wanted to try to find some way of creating a visual representation of a million. They decided they'd type zeroes on a page...then paste all the pages together until they had a million zeroes. As I recall, they stopped somewhere in the 20,000 range, realizing the idea was impossible to complete in any rational amount of time. I did the math - on a page of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, using Microsoft Word's default settings, you can type 4872 zeroes. This means, you'll have to have 205,254.5 sheets of paper to hold a million zeroes (in 10 point type, mind you). Still, that number is not very tangible - nothing you can compare to directly. Well, 205,254.5 sheets of paper laid end to end longwise is 188,149 feet - and that comes to 35.6 miles of zeroes. Drive from Downtown to somewhere close to Conroe to go 35.6 miles. A million is a very big number.
When we read in our papers, or view on TV the horrors of a mother killing her own children, we're seeing a finite, easy to digest number of things packaged into a half hour, or into a folding of paper. Only the newsworthy shows up and we're able to handle dealing with that. However, to try to
understand the millions of lives through which we pass every day (or moreso - who we never come in contact with) is a boundless task that shows a complexity to the system that is impossible to fathom - like trying to view those almost 36 miles of zeroes as a single thing. In any system, the more complex it becomes, the more likely some kind of failure is possible. So to cry madly, "How could she do that to her children!?" is hopelessly lacking in an understanding of the system in which the event occurred. We try to hold up our own lives as an example of how others should behave since we know our own lives so well. But to hold our own lives up against the life of another and expect their outlines to match is foolhardy. There are just too many parts to the system to expect it. And with so many parts, one has to expect some of them to go awry. Not that this is right - but it is simply inevitable.
And for some reason, that comforted me. While the story about the psychotic mother was tragic and elicited sadness in me, that it was the inevitable result of a complex system beyond which we have the ability to truly comprehend, it calmed my sadness.
At this, I got a little choked-up as I thought of my own girls and what it would do to me if they were yanked out of my life. I glanced upward and my gaze swept across the view from the 21st floor of my workplace. I have a rather commanding view of the Galleria and most of west Houston from where I sit and it occurred to me that it was impossible to try to comprehend the amount of humanity contained in the scope of my gaze at that instant. Furthermore, to try to scale that to the city, let alone the country or the world, would be fruitless. Our tiny minds aren't able to actually comprehend the millions of souls and what those kinds of numbers mean to a system as complex as humanity.
In today's world, we bandy-about the term "million" as if it were nothing, but most of us are incapable of actually wrapping our minds around what the term means. When I was in 5th grade, a student wanted to try to find some way of creating a visual representation of a million. They decided they'd type zeroes on a page...then paste all the pages together until they had a million zeroes. As I recall, they stopped somewhere in the 20,000 range, realizing the idea was impossible to complete in any rational amount of time. I did the math - on a page of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, using Microsoft Word's default settings, you can type 4872 zeroes. This means, you'll have to have 205,254.5 sheets of paper to hold a million zeroes (in 10 point type, mind you). Still, that number is not very tangible - nothing you can compare to directly. Well, 205,254.5 sheets of paper laid end to end longwise is 188,149 feet - and that comes to 35.6 miles of zeroes. Drive from Downtown to somewhere close to Conroe to go 35.6 miles. A million is a very big number.
When we read in our papers, or view on TV the horrors of a mother killing her own children, we're seeing a finite, easy to digest number of things packaged into a half hour, or into a folding of paper. Only the newsworthy shows up and we're able to handle dealing with that. However, to try to
understand the millions of lives through which we pass every day (or moreso - who we never come in contact with) is a boundless task that shows a complexity to the system that is impossible to fathom - like trying to view those almost 36 miles of zeroes as a single thing. In any system, the more complex it becomes, the more likely some kind of failure is possible. So to cry madly, "How could she do that to her children!?" is hopelessly lacking in an understanding of the system in which the event occurred. We try to hold up our own lives as an example of how others should behave since we know our own lives so well. But to hold our own lives up against the life of another and expect their outlines to match is foolhardy. There are just too many parts to the system to expect it. And with so many parts, one has to expect some of them to go awry. Not that this is right - but it is simply inevitable.
And for some reason, that comforted me. While the story about the psychotic mother was tragic and elicited sadness in me, that it was the inevitable result of a complex system beyond which we have the ability to truly comprehend, it calmed my sadness.
posted by Erik | 9:55 AM
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