Two/Half

Numbers arę just numbers. “Numbers are […] are respected, and used […] because they are the only ones around. Changes to them not only function to reassure the world’s great powers and convince their underlings how well their policies have been working, but they are also used to decide the fate of billions of dollars in aid and distributions. These numbers underpin what is known in good bureaucratese, as “policy continuity” and the “allocation of resources.”.1

The tablecloth is based upon numbers. The language of numbers created the world of Covid-19. Subsidies, benefits, inheritances, increases, deaths, infections, recoveries, bankruptcies, unemployment. The safe number is 2. Apparently, two meters are the safe distance we need to keep in order to stay healthy. Half is the measure of hope. Hammer and sickle and the circles in the MasterCard logo are also divided in half. 

What changes will the political and economic systems undergo? Will move towards the politics of care, or deepening inequality?

I do’nt know, a phrase so often repeated in interviews, on TV, in the press, in response to questions about the modes of transmission of the virus, the number of infected, life during and after a pandemic. Written in broken English, the lingua franca of today’s world in which travel and migration are commonplace. The fact that we are able to roam around the world is one of the causes of the pandemic.

1 Martín Caparrós, Hunger: The Oldest Problem, Melville House, 2020, p. 110