The Battle For Control Reduces Everything In Its Path To A Mere Statistic.

We don’t really know what to expect these days. There are many things out there that jostle for our time and attention. We’ve got the bright lights and advertisements trying to get us to part with our money for products that we don’t need. We’ve got the bright screens of our phones, tablets and computers trying to get us to be more productive at work.

It’s a game of control and manipulation, unfortunately. And we even see that in our bodies — the irony of it!

Because gaining control is a means of more financial gain — we can see how victorious armies have always looted the cities that they conquer and take their wealth stores. The difference between a warmongering army and a billion-dollar corporation, though?

The billion-dollar corporation takes one’s wealth in a non-violent manner. In fact, the character Fry in Futurama popularised the meme “Shut Up And Take My Money!” in 2010 while attempting to purchase a phone from a store. That’s not very violent, is it?

(Meanwhile, Apple Corp and Android Corp are still slugging it out behind the scenes for the collective billions or trillions of dollars that their clientele can splash out.)

And we become statistics in that sense, represented by a number such as “market share”.

Even when we’re at work…

We become yet another statistic. We’re costing our organisation $X per year in terms of a salary payout, for instance. We have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to meet, and that’s also another statistic.

Of course, we’re being controlled to meet those targets.

Especially when there is a carrot of a big bonus dangled in front of us if we can jump through hoops — only for that promise to be rescinded when we can’t completely the entire gauntlet.

Every person is just being reduced to a mere statistic here.

But the problem is…

We’re human. We’re living beings with a capacity for feeling emotions. We have cognitive minds that can think and process information in different ways.

The reduction of a human being to a mere statistic does no justice to a person’s identity, but yet it’s the most convenient way to categorise a human being.

And therein lies the problem. Human beings get treated like statistics even when they shouldn’t be treated like such.

Because what happens, then, is that this reductionist view of human beings cheapens their worth significantly.

After all, one of the biggest business clichés around is that every employee is absolutely replaceable. It’s a dehumanising thought, for sure, and it does relegate the worth of a human being to just a mere machine.

Ever seen how taxi drivers use their cabs? Those cabs are meant to be run into the ground throughout the course of their functional lifespans. Put as much mileage on it and get rid of it when it has outlived its usefulness.

Because taxicabs are replaceable.

But are humans replaceable?

Slave masters in the past would have said that slaves were absolutely replaceable. Just work them to death and get a new slave.

We get unhappy with such statements.

We get unhappy when we see stories of war, and prisoners of war being worked to their deaths while on some big construction project, such as the infamous Death Railway that links modern day Thailand with Myanmar.

But they were slaves, and therefore they were replaceable.

The thing is, do we still have that mindset today?

Some corporate organisations do tend to exploit their workers — Amazon being one of the notable culprits out there.

Work a person down to the ground, fire them, and replace them with fresh blood.

No difference from slavery, is there?

However, the soullessness of such an operation makes it extremely profitable — and that’s what we have to challenge on the grounds of how morally acceptable that is.

After all, we’re humans. Each human will have their own ups and downs. People struggle with all sorts of physical, emotional and psychological issues these days. On the bright side, some people are technically gifted, while others have a better ability to connect with other people.

All these gifts form a brilliant synergy and aren’t as replaceable as a soulless corporate culture would want to assume.

But the assumptions are ever-present. We can’t escape it.

Because, statistically, we have that darned Central Limit Theorem (CLT).

It’s going to tell us that:

the distribution of a sample variable approximates a normal distribution (i.e., a “bell curve”) as the sample size becomes larger, assuming that all samples are identical in size, and regardless of the population’s actual distribution shape.

The thing is that when I can use statistical modelling to predict how a large population will respond to a certain stimulus accurately, it becomes much easier to manipulate them to part with their money.

Don’t we call that the “herd mentality” too? It is, after all,

the tendency of the people in a group to think and behave in ways that conform with others in the group rather than as individuals.

The most common response from the herd would be something that can be predicted by statistical modelling.

There is strength in numbers… unfortunately when a big number falls, there is quite a fair bit of strength in their fall, too — which, of course, means that someone will end up gaining big!

Which is why when enough people feel overworked or undercompensated, The Great Resignation of 2021 will occur.

When sufficient people are rallied to protest against the power that hedge funds were abusing/manipulating/controlling, the GameStop anomaly will appear.

When sufficient people are rallied to a certain cause, the reverse effect may be achieved instead. For example, Leonardo diCaprio, the climate activist who flies into Glasgow (commercially, not privately, at least) to observe the COP26 protests in Glasgow, one would mull over the irony of an activist contributing even more to climate change when he would have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by not flying in the first place, isn’t it? Climate change isn’t as much a scientific issue as a political issue these days.

The one who gains an overall control of the situation profits.

At the end of the day, the employee is still under the control of the employer. They try to wrest control from the employer by getting unions and employee rights.

At the end of the day, the business is under the control of the customer. They try to manipulate the customers to spend more with nice advertisements and payment plans.

We have this neverending battle for control within our lives, whether we like it or not.

All because most people never did learn how to take time out to understand one another and treat each other better.

Because how many stereotypes out there exist as a result of a statistical “observation” or experience?

What happens when black men are seen to be larger and more threatening than white men of the same size?

Would that have influenced how George Floyd was treated, for instance?

What happens when Islamophobia in the United Kingdom hinders Muslims from being gainfully employed, for instance?

It all comes about from seeing people as a reductionist statistic rather than for who they actually are, isn’t it?

But we like being in control of the narrative.

Until the controlled side has had enough and unleashes a pent-up fury from deep within.

Which, of course, the social media giants such as Facebook and Google have learnt how to exploit.

Because it is said that Facebook profits off hate and anger. The more angry one is, the more their emotions are stirred up. And emotional marketing can stir up people to behave like Futurama’s Fry much more easily.

Those who can manipulate the emotions of the herd are the true chessmasters in this game of control for the available cashflow, that is for sure!

We’d have to see what the COP26 protesters spent on while in or getting to Glasgow and things might get really interesting, too…

This article was originally published on Medium.