At what point do we start getting worried about the number of deaths?

There never seems to be a limit. While stacking up the stories, as in the case of Syria, we first start counting the deaths by hundreds, thousands, ten thousands and then hundreds of thousands… Each time this happens, the world quavers just a little, becoming our hidden guilt for our failure to act. Although, there may be sham attempts to initiate action, the next day, it becomes business as usual – we cowardly resign our efforts. We go back to our ordinary lives. Even at 120,000 deaths, the death toll never ends. After all this, the people that have died become inanimate, simple mathematical objects, numbers that we keep adding up, piling up and hoping that they will end. However, in doing this, we fall into an endless pit, it never ends.

In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, we find ourselves in this same state of addiction with numbers. At each threshold, we talk about what it would mean if the number of deaths exceeded a certain limit, as if to convince ourselves of the magnitude of the tragedy. It feels like the world is on holiday, slowly looking on and counting, as if the wait would bring some sort of painful joy. The movie keeps on rolling, even until the 4000^th death. It has its plots and dramatic developments. Sometimes, featuring characters such as a Spanish lady and a dog. And in that moment, the world shows its true colours, it shows what it values the most.

Consequently, we live in a world governed by numbers. We disqualify everything that we cannot count. Even in economics, sports and politics, everything has numbers attached to them. Life is reduced to numbers and rates that either give you access or banishes you from society. If you fail at this task you are nothing. Even the dead are subject to this fate. This mind set of quantity can be seen in all domains of life. It has even infiltrated the last bastion that refused to succumb to this mentality: our emotions. We have begun to sell our emotions, trading it like it was an object to be sold at an auction house.

For our emotions to be of worth, they must have a numerical value. Whenever the tragedy of the ‘‘Grim Reaper’’ affects only a few people, this goes unnoticed. Even in news reports, we are first given the death toll and then the rest of the facts. This is the only recognition the world gives of the dead, which depends in a way, on numbers. This is the litmus test that the dead have to face.

The world is slowly becoming a homogenous block. Paradigms are slowly converging and the impact of the ideology of Numbers is increasing. The rapid way in which the world follows this ideology has two major consequences. We are abandoning some virtues that would reorient the world in a better way. Thus, the world is controlled by a handful of people whose whims govern billions of others. The concentration of power in the hands of a small group of people could be destructive. These are the effects we see in the lives of ‘‘foot soldiers’’- those who find themselves caught up in geopolitical conflicts, power struggles and economic differences. These foot ‘‘soldiers’’ are sometimes kidnapped or even killed by the thousands. This new way of doing numbers, of calculating impact, is a vicious cycle that is the cause of a lot of catastrophes. It has an unrelenting hold on man.

We could also say that the origins of these catastrophes can be found in the notion of dogmatic individualism, which has fed segregation and the notion of national boundaries.

In a less abstract world, we could consider this as a catastrophe, due to the selfishness of leaders. In play, we see the effects of capitalism that renders useless, all sense of duty that anyone could have. Instead, it fills us up with this egoistic feeling that ends of removing any possibility of going to help others in need.

These societal principles are slowly enslaving our minds. They continue to damage every feeling of solidarity, underestimating its capabilities and condemning it as benign. Finally, we have accepted this world concept, this dearth of emotion as normal, as one which we must always adhere to. This collective resignation has become the mentality of a lot of us. Moreover, to this phenomenon, we have added its offspring: the cult of Numbers.

In this world, where size is the only thing that matters, the truth has no other characteristic than that of quantity. There is no other symbolism, even if there are 6 million deaths.

Translated by Onyinyechi Ananaba