When you pause to think about it for a moment, numbers are a truly remarkable thing. I can use the number three to count three oranges, three apples, or three cats. Indeed, I can use the number three to count the
collection of an apple, cat, and orange. In this regard, numbers are indifferent to what they count. On the one hand, there is the
number that does the counting, while on the other hand, there are the entities that are
counted. Remarkably, the number is the same regardless of whether it counts three apples, three oranges, or three cats. It's still the
same number three even if it counts a
collection of an apple, an orange, and a cat. Most astonishingly, we can even use numbers to count what isn't there. For instance, I still owe a great deal of money on my car. That money will only materialize in the future. In this case, numbering is a promise against my future.
More below the fold:
I apologize for this rather trite and obvious observation. After all, why should there be a discussion of the properties of unique properties of numbers on a blog devoted to political discourse? However, while these observations might appear trite and obvious, I would like to suggest that they are vital to political thought. In fact, I would like to suggest that the split between the right and the left is fundamentally a split in two ways of counting.
At the very heart of progressive politics is the operation of counting. This might come as a surprise as many of us who have a passion for the political do not think of ourselves as mathematicians. Yet mathematicians we are. We are not simply mathematicians in the sense that we are worried about getting votes and that we perhaps pay attention to polls. Rather, we are mathematicians in the sense that we are occupied with the activity of ensuring that everyone counts... That is, the core idea of leftist politics is the idea that everyone ought to be counted.
We can see how this idea resonates with respect to the last two elections. During the last two elections there was an obvious miscount. And insofar as there was an obvious miscount, an injustice was done. Injustice or wrong is that moment where someone goes uncounted. However, there is a more profound sense in which progressive politics is based on the idea that everyone counts. As I remarked above, the operation of counting is indifferent to the entities that are counted. The number one is the same regardless of the entity to which that number is applied. Leftist activism has a passion for the purity of numbers. Thus, the basic principle of progressive thought is that if it is a person, then it is to be counted.
The notion of right, of justice, is deeply connected to the notion of being counted. We see this throughout global history with respect to all progressive social movements. The emancipation of African-Americans was based on the principle that insofar as they are humans, they must be counted. The emancipation of women was based on the principle that insofar as they are human, they must be counted. The issue of gay marriage is that insofar as gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered individuals are human, they must be counted. And today, in light of the struggles over homeland security, the struggle is to ensure that both citizens in the United States and persons abroad are counted and ensured their rights. Democracy is intrinsically based on the principle that everyone must be counted, regardless of their differences.
It is for this reason that true democracy is horrifying to so many, for true democracy is a practice of set theoretical mathematics, rather than class theoretical mathematics. The difference between a set and a class is of the utmost interest to political thought, for it fundamentally defines the difference between the left and the right. Mathematically a class is understood as a collection whereby all the members of the collection share a common feature. For instance, we might speak of the class of all horses or the class of all coffee tables. By contrast, a set can include anything, regardless of whether those things share something in common or not. Thus, I can have a set that consists of the moon, a bit of chedder cheese, a needle, and a fantasy. These things share nothing in common, but can nonetheless be grouped together in a collection. Democracy consists in thinking in terms of sets rather than classes, because democracy begins with the premise that anyone has a right to be engaged in the political process, regardless of whether they share some common feature.
In his speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama joyously proclaimed that there are not two Americas. In making this declaration he was profoundly proclaiming that the United States is based on a logic of sets, rather than a logic of classes. Whether one is male or female, black, white, asian, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Wiccan, Satanic, or purple, everyone in the United States has rights and is welcome to participate.
Yet while Obama might have been correct in claiming that there are not two Americas, it is clear today that there are two political philosophies. There is the philosophy of the left based on the universality of inclusion in the set and the struggle to include those who have been excluded within the set, and there is the philosophy of the right, class logic, which believes that inclusion within the American system is contingent upon some shared characteristic. When those on the left talk to those on the right, when we use the same word "America", we are referring to profoundly different things. Those on the left are referring to universality, inclusiveness, or the idea that everyone counts.
By contrast, those on the right are referring to a principle of inclusion that simultaneously excludes: Namely, they are referring to the thesis that in order to be included in the American system one has to be white, Christian, middle classed, male, and heterosexual. In short, on the right there is an implicit principle for the application of numbers. That is to say, for the right, there are those who count and there are those who don't count. Or rather, the claim is that some count more than others; hence the endless yapping about how this country was founded on Christian principles. Implicitly recognizing the injustice of this principle of counting, the right then has to vigorously deny that anyone is going uncounted.
Those of us on the left have struggled since the founding of this nation to ensure that everyone counts. It began with our struggle against England. It continued with the Civil War. It grew with women's emancipation. And it continued with the struggles for Civil Rights. Today this battle continues with respect to gay rights, spiritual freedom, economic rights for the disenfranchised, and global human rights. Given the tremendous forces of power that we now face, given the technological acumen of the police state, this struggle is perhaps graver than it has ever been. But we must not forget that we are the true mathematicians, that we are those who understand the universality of counting or that everyone counts. And we must not cease struggling to count everyone and everything. For wherever principles of miscounting emerge, totalitarian horror ensues.