The current global financial crisis marks, not only the impending failure of worldwide monetary systems but also, more importantly, a failure of modern values. What we are seeing is the bankruptcy of a social order where money has acquired more value than the sanctity of life. Questions of social standards as they apply to human conduct, like questions of meaning in human life, lead inevitably to the question of meaning in the phenomenon of language.

　　　The language of finance, like the language of science and technology, is the language of numbers. Language in general and numbers in particular are what give us, above all other species, the ability to influence and change our environment. The ability to measure and quantify the natural world, to predict outcomes, and to produce results consistent with expectations - these are what define us and define the success of failure of our human civilization, and all of this in turn is dependent upon our understanding of numerical processes: our ability to add, multiply, divide,and subtract, our ability to measure and quantify, our ability to deduce unknowns from knowns.

　　　The numbers in qusetion derive from a specific set of numerals introduced into Western culture from North African Arabic culture during the Middle Ages. These numerals - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 - are now the accepted medium of numeric notation around the world. What sets these numerals apart from others is their capacity for decimal notation through the use of the numeral, zero, as a placeholder. This simple innovation makes all the difference in matters of computation and has added light years to human progress.

　　　The word, zero, and the word, cipher, we are told, have a common Arabic root (the Arabic root in turn derives from a Sanskrit word mesning "nothingness" or "void". So etymologically and numerically, zero appears to be the cipher of numeric value. It may also be the cipher of our cultural values, as I will illustrate.

　　　Zero, as it is commonly used, is the numerical value assigned to that that is left when you take away the last apple. There is, however , an enormous gulf, a veritable chasm, in meaning between one apple and none. Can you really count the apple that was there but is no longer? And if you could, wouldn't there in fact be an infinite number of non-apples? The universe itself would be made up of missing apples! What we are really saying when we use the word, zero, is no number. There is no number of apples when you take the last one away.

　　　Numbers: word or symbols that indicare quantity or position. In which case, zero is not a number! Or rather, zero is a cardinal number by convention, not an intrinsic unit of nature. Consider the consequences of this statement. For one, it calls into question the conceptual validity of a continuum of real numbers stretching away from zero in either direction. It also calls into question the concept of measurement in terms of Cartesian coordinates, where zero marks the intersection of vertical and horizontal, and of time and space, thereby making all values within the system relative to a non-value. These concepts are brilliant and extremely useful. They yield correct answers and produce valid results. Even so we need to consider that they may not be true descriptions of order in the real world.

　　　Order implies continuity. There is continuity between one and two, as one of something implies the possibility of another. Where there is an apple,

　　　A correct understanding of numbers requires that we give them another context. Apple and non-apple are relative values subject to comparison. The universe as a whole, on the other hond, is one big "is". The "nothing" ness that fills up the gaps between galaxies and subatomic particles is of a different order of value from non-apple; it is the "is" ness, the "being" ness within which apple and no apple and all other relative phenomena are definde. The emptiness that is space is also a fullness occupying every corner of the transparent great expanse. So in this sense, zero is the buckct that contains all of the other numbers, right up to infinity. And since there can only be one such bucket, the number associated with this fundamental "is" ness is one.

　　　One is the numeric value, or content, of the non- numeric condition, or context, zero. It is also singular and therefore absolute, as in not relative. Being is not relative to anything-certainly not to zero, since being is a condition of zero as much as it is of one. Numerical order is all a function of singularity. What we are dealing with in language is the context of singularity, and meaning-all meaning-is attributable to that singularity. Thus the word universe: A unity of versatility; a singularity that turns around itself, giving rise to the vast plurality of meaning; the stanza of creation; the metered and metaphoric linguistic content of the big event.

　　　Two is an attribute of one, that which allows one to manifest simultaneously as space and time, for example. And of course, once that happens the door is left wide open for the rest of numerical order.

　　　Within this context, numbers are not comparative values or magnitudes. Numbers are order itself. Each describes a state of being in the evolution of meaning, and since absolute reality (the substance of meaning) did not evolve inside fo space and time (rather it created space and time), the numbers one to infinity happen issatantaneously. Numbers tell the history fo creation. Therein the power fo mathematics.

　　　And therein also the root of the problem. For although mathematics derives its authority from the absolute authority (absolute order) of numbers, the numbers of mathematics are not this absolute order. They are the borrowed numbers of the relative world, the numbers of comparative value, greater and fewer, more and less, fast and slew, hot and cold, plus and minus.

　　　As we have acknowledged, the number notation used predominantly throughout the world today is the set of Arabic numerals. These numerals are integral to our planetary culture and therefor integral to the definition of our values. And central

　　　Unquwstionably this number system is among human civilization's most pofound cultural assets. However, to the extent we place our belief in it as a guiding principle in areas outside of the physical, applying it to the domain of human conduct and sensibility in the same way we do to the world of nebulas and subatomic particles, it is also a liability. Modern reductionism is no more than another form of fundamentalist fanaticism. Life does not operate by the same set of rules as the physical universe, anymore than intelligence derives from the world of cause and effect. The absurdity of the notion that all things have a physical origin is self-evident: if everything is indeed relative then what is the relative world relative to?

　　　Numerical reasoning, because it is the reasoning of observation, fosters the mentality of detachmen, the concept of mind as an observer functioning outside of the laws of nature. The detached mind, in turn, mistakes cleverness for free will and creative genius. It also sponsors the michanical worldview and subscribes religiously to the laws of cause and effect. This mentality operates under the spell of the "cold light" of reason, the light of skepticism and critical reasoning whose coldness is a measure of its separateness and individuality.

　　　Human reason, as it operates within the context of numerical culture, isolates and evaluates the phenomenal world in ever smaller increments until it becomes so focused on the world's parts that it looses sight of the whole. Where natural reason is the reason of a supremely intelligent natural order, the cold light of reason is the shallow reflection of that reason, the selective, self-ordained reason of individual man.

　　　The working of natural reason generates a condition of absolute temperature-the pervasive warmth we call infinite compassion or universal love. This condition is the standard that underlies all of our notions about ethics and morality. Numbers, in their universal context, are the objective aspect of the abstract creative order. In their relative, cultural context they have the potential to exert, as their name implies, a profound desensitization, as in rendering insensitive (unfeeling) as a result of cold. Ours is a culture in which number defines our values and gives rise to a particular worldview. Ours is also a culture devoid of absolute values, a world operating on principles of profit and loss, where life is perceived to be no more than a numbers game.

　　　These statements are to be taken as observations, not assignments of blame. My intention is to call attention to the fabric of our cultural prejudice, not to condemn it. The great achievements of Western civilization stand on their own merit. The West has excelled through its advocacy of the rational domain and its passion for critical examination. Over the last two thousand years it has delivered up much

　　　It is time , however, to consider the possibility that the purpose of that civilization may be approaching fulfillment. Its cultural mission may be coming to an end, to the extent that to continue further down this same path is to invite the almost certain planetary self-destruction already threatened by our arsenls, our wanton environmental irresponsibility, and our epidemic social and physical disorders. We stand today at the brink, looking out on either no future or the next evolutionary step forward.

　　　I make no claim to an inside track on evolution. I do, however, acknowledge my exposure to an extraordinary life work and a priveleged association with its creator, Sanae Odano, for over twenty years. Odano Sensei is a resident of Tokyo born in 1908. Her work is the inspiration behind this writing, even though these ideas and their expression are entirely my own.

　　　Odano Sensei's life story usurps the momentum of the age, exceeding even the pace of the tumultuous course of events and radical social change that has taken place in her country during the same period of time. It furthemore embodies the meeting of East and West through her impassioned application of the rigor of analytical reasoning to the larger questions of human experience. This objective yet intensely personal inquiry has lead to a new definition of the place and purpose of human language.

　　　Speaking, then, with the limited authority of an individual who has lived for many years in another culture, and in the course of so doing happens to have been exposed to an extraordinary example of a human life and a compelling body of work based on that life, I submit for consideration the following proposition: Numbers, like all other word entities, are expressions of the vibrational fabric of life energy. Specifically, they are the expression of the objective aspect of that energy, and integral to the substance of meaning.

　　　Numbers are, however, only one aspect of meaning and not to be separated from the greater phenomenon of language. Precise with regard to order, and in that capacity the measure of physical processes, numbers are also incapable alone of describing the human condition. Just as it is impossible to construct a meaningful sentence with only numbers (even mathematical formulas depend upon other-than-number symbols to fill in the grammatical gaps), so are numbers inadequate to the expression of ideas.

　　　The other critical aspect of meaning is sound. If number gives breadth to meaning, sound gives depth, just as to sound is to gauge for depth, and that which is sound has depth or is on solid footing.

　　　The broad-reaching objectivity of numbers is in and of itself not lacking; it merely calls for a reassessment of the experiential aspect of meaning. Furthermore, the tools with which to do this are immediately available. They are provided for through the medium of culture and the spoken and written word.

Steve Earle
October 15, 1998
Richmond, Virginia