Monday, November 28, 2011

Inscrutable arithmetic

In the thirty years since I left the domain of mathematics (you have heard that story right? About when I skipped math class for a month as a high school sophomore? Oh well, if not, you should ask about it sometime—it is a doozy of adolescent stupidity!) I have rarely found myself in a math classroom. However, with my new title and responsibilities as…ahem…Dean of Curriculum and Instruction, I have been to every kind of classroom in the last month. It is safe to say that I have seen more math classes this fall than in the last thirty years put together. I have seen Geometry and Algebra and Algebra II and Statistics and something called FST and Calculus, both AP and non-AP. I have seen some excellent instruction, and since I do not have to worry about the content (one could easily say I am content-free in this arena) I can simply enjoy the pedagogy of my colleagues. I have enjoyed going to math class!

So all this going-to-class in math made me think about math and arithmetic in other areas of the world; since I live in the world of the Bible, I often think about the people who trod this area back in Bible times. So I was thinking about the Bible and arithmetic. The story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes concludes with this bit of data: “Those who ate were about five thousand men ….to say nothing of the women and children.” So I gotta ask: Who was doing the counting? I wonder who was counting on the day Jesus produced this miracle. Matthew tells us someone was counting the loaves and fishes: they started with a count of five and two … but then, after all had eaten, they ended up with “twelve baskets full.” And someone was counting the people … or at least someone was counting some of the people: “those who ate were about five thousand men … to say nothing of the women and children.” Whoever counted, only counted the men. They only counted the men because only men counted. So how many were there? How do we do the arithmetic? At this picnic there could roughly be two or three or four or five times as many people, if we count everyone really there. (I need a tangent here—the whole thing about ‘not enough food’—have times changed so much? For what mother leaves the house with her child without bringing along snacks: juice boxes, animal crackers, yogurt, Cheerio’s, string cheese????)

Biblical arithmetic is inscrutable. Jesus said if you own two coats, that’s one too many: give one away. On the other hand, if someone slaps you on one cheek, that’s one too few: invite them to slap you on the other cheek … and make it an even pair.
Biblical arithmetic is inscrutable. Jesus said we are to forgive those who sin against us, not seven times, but seventy times seven times … which is a lot … four hundred and ninety times … The point is that none of us, not even those who make an art of holding a grudge, can count that high.

The moral of the story: stop counting and start forgiving.

Jesus has an unusual way of counting. He said this: If you have 100 sheep and one goes missing, you should abandon those 99. Leave them defenseless against wolves and go chase down that one that was lost. That’s quite a gamble. So, here’s a riddle: What if those numbers are reversed? What if it’s the other way round? What if it is not the one who is lost, but the 99? Put it another way: If the 1% are okay and the 99% are in trouble, what should we do?

Ahhh…do you see a contemporary connection right now?? In 60 cities across the US (as I follow from my Middle Eastern armchair) right now there is a “99% Movement” in the Occupy _____ protests. These movements claim to represent the 99% of Americans and how the 1% of wealthy Americans have grown too rich while the vast majority have been left behind. As these protests grow into their third month, critics keep asking what it is all about? (This question came up the other day in a class of mine and a supper time conversation with students and teachers.)

From what I have gathered it is a little murky, but not really anti-capitalist. I think the source of the frustration and anger is income inequality. Let’s do the math they tell us in the news. I have read that the wealthiest 400 people in the US are now worth more than the bottom 150 million Americans. Hmmm…and three years after taxpayers bailed out the Wall Street gamblers whose recklessness stirred up the Great Recession, the average pay in the securities industry is over $360,000. Gulp! I don’t often quote Al Gore, but the once-inventor of the internet says we are seeing “a primal scream of democracy.”

“We are the 99 percent” is a great slogan. It correctly defines the issue as being the middle class versus the elite (as opposed to the middle class versus the poor). And it also gets past the common but wrong establishment notion that rising inequality is mainly about the well educated doing better than the less educated; the big winners in this new Gilded Age have been a handful of very wealthy people, not college graduates in general.

Economist Paul Krugman wrote the other day, “If anything, however, the 99 percent slogan aims too low. A large fraction of the top 1 percent’s gains have actually gone to an even smaller group, the top 0.1 percent — the richest one-thousandth of the population.”

Krugman’s article helped me out a little: “The recent Congressional Budget Office report on inequality didn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, did. According to that report, between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted, after-tax income of Americans in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. The equivalent number for the richest 0.1 percent rose 400 percent.”

I read a story the other day about one of the satellite protests, the Occupy Boston protest. There were champions and critics of this protest, like in all cities, but it made me think about the history of Boston as well. Back in another November, the November of 1773 (wow—238 years ago, and no, I was not there) there was incredible frustration about income and tax inequality then too. People we routinely call ‘patriots’ today did some counting and counted the total chests of tea aboard three ships in Boston Harbor: 342 chests. They counted and deeply resented the taxes they were obligated to pay to the British Crown for their beloved tea. So they had a Tea Party. Heard of it?

After the Boston Tea Party, after the three ships had been boarded and after the chests had been pried open and the tea poured into the Harbor—all 342 chests, all 90,000 pounds of tea—Benjamin Franklin, the one and only, counted the cost. No fan of such wanton waste of good tea, Franklin urged the colonists to pay back the cost of the destroyed property (which, at two shillings per pound, came to £9,000, or, in today’s numbers: £888 thousand). I was just in London, so let me do the math for you. More than a million dollars. A tidy sum. But counting is a tricky business … as we know, the counting being in the eye of the beholder.

Like the Occupy Movement, the Boston Tea Party had its many detractors: those who condemned it as the “ill-conceived act of a lawless mob.” And it had its defenders: those who, like John Adams, found it “dignified, majestic and sublime.” The Boston Tea Party was, and Occupy is, fundamentally about money and fairness.

Both movements sprang from a similar conviction: that a small percent of those in charge are playing by a different set of rules than everyone else.

The Boston Tea Party involved trespassing on private property and the temporary occupation of ships belonging to the East India Company … while Occupy involves the occupation of public spaces.

Unlike Occupy, The Boston Tea Party, centered on and depended on the intentional, calculated destruction of property.

Like the Occupy Movement, the Boston Tea Partiers were comprised of more than its serious organizers and activists … there were other elements along for the ride: common thieves, smugglers, hooligans, drunkards, and provocateurs … all of whom attracted the attention of detractors and gave to the committed activists a bad name.
If Biblical arithmetic is inscrutable, it is not alone in that. One of the most inscrutable statistics about Occupy is this: half of the top 1% of earners in this country don’t count themselves in the top 1% … according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

Whether you are counted, and how much you count for, very much depends on who is doing the counting.

What about your arithmetic? How do you count?

1 comment:

Samantha said...

Mr. Leistler! If I had to choose a masterpiece of the week, it would totally be this article. As always, I love hearing your questions and insights into the past and present.

On a related, totally not-serious note, I thought you might appreciate this satirical little piece about OWS. Whether or not you agree with OWS, I think you'll find it entertaining - I know I did!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-16-2011/occupy-wall-street-divided