Numbers can be fascinating and for many they are simply painful (when they remember all those torturous hours in math classes). Other find them to effective tools, some use them as weapons. There have been and still are those who think that they hold the key to life and the universe. Regardless of where you stand and what you think, sometimes they are simply interesting in their own right.
Numbers can take many forms: formulas, facts, accounting figures, statistics, and more. Each of these can be used in any number of ways, some for good and some to the detriment of others. We're confronted with them all the time, and a lot of us simply feel that we are somehow powerless against them. Still, I find them interesting nevertheless. Of course, my engagement with numbers always remain on a small scale. For example, Google (which hosts this blog) provides statistics (or analytics, as they like to call them ... sounds much more impressive) and I like to check them out from time to time, just for fun.
For example, Google shows me how many times a blog post has been viewed. Notice I didn't say "read". There is no information how long any individual remains on a page, only that the page was called up; that is, viewed. It seems to me not all that far-fetched to compare how often a blog is viewed with its topic. People who write are always interested in what interests their audience and one possible indicator would be how often a given post on a given topic is viewed. If you make the effort to look at these over a period of time, it is also not surprising that trends can appear. We have to be careful with trends because we can see what they are, but there is nothing in the numbers to actually say why they are that way. Still, patterns arise, and I've noticed one lately.
It would appear that posts I write which deal with general, broad, encompassing topics, be they historical, political or such generally get more views that those posts which deal with us as individual human beings. In other words, when speaking to "you" plural there is more attention than when speaking to "you" singular. I simply find that interesting. When I'm suggesting we clean up the planet, there is more of a "yeah" than when I suggest we clean up our own acts. There could be any number of reasons for this, and as I said, the numbers don't really provide a clue. Still, I can tell you what I am thinking:
To me, there are two possible, and I believe equally probable, "explanations". First, we simply don't feel spoken to. Even though the point is always that even though you may think you've got your act together, it never hurts to double check, perhaps against other, more broadly based criteria. Second, people don't like to think they're part of the problem. I can understand that, for I often feel that way myself. But a simple point remains: we are all part of the problem, if not the problem itself.
The world is as it is because we -- all of us -- allow it to be that way. The only sure way to change it, even minimally, is to change ourselves. The moment we think it is "the others" who are the problem, we become the problem. Think about it.
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