That System Does Not Count You as One Person

You contact a certain office because you need something. First, you are asked for your number. Not your name — your number. Before they even consider who you are, they need to know which numbered slot you occupy. While you wait to be processed in turn, you quietly set aside, for a little while, the fact that you are one individual human being.

Last time, I observed a story about someone on the other side of the screen gaining something quietly. And I made a promise: next, I would look back from that other side, toward you. Today I want to stand inside the system, and observe how you — one single person — are counted there.

One at a Time Is Not Possible

When you think about it, this is not an unreasonable arrangement. There are eight billion people on this planet. To know each one by name, to understand their circumstances, to read their mood and respond accordingly — no system in the world can do that. So systems choose a smarter method. They stop looking at individuals, and look only at the whole.

Think of a gas. The air that fills a room is a collection of particles beyond counting. No one tracks where any single particle is flying at this moment. There is no need to. Instead, you watch only two numbers averaged across the whole — temperature and pressure. That tells you everything you need. Where you, as one particle, happened to be and what you happened to feel today is, to the system, a piece of information not worth following. What matters is the smooth, flat number that emerges when eight billion particles are averaged together.

Here is something remarkable. No one can predict what a single person will do tomorrow. And yet how a million people will move can be stated with surprising accuracy. The more particles there are, the more their individual variations cancel each other out, and the whole becomes smoother. So the system has no interest in you as an individual. Its interest is only in which direction the large mass that includes you happens to be flowing. — Written like this, it sounds cold. But on the single measure of efficiency, it is, in fact, a perfectly sensible arrangement.

That smoothness turns up closer to home than you might think. However urgently you reach out, however carefully you choose your words when asking for help, what comes back is most likely the same reply sent to everyone else. It looks as though it was written for your specific situation, but in reality, anyone among eight billion who stood in the same place would receive the exact same thing without a word of difference. It is not unkind. It is just that the kindness was prepared not for you as an individual, but for the "type" of person you represent — drawn up in advance, to cover anyone who fits.

The Few Who Are Called by Name

And yet. If you look more carefully inside the same system, you notice that there are a small number of people who are never smoothed over.

In certain kinds of places, customers are greeted not by number but by name. Their circumstances are known ahead of time. Their needs are handled without being made to wait. A dedicated person attends to them, and time is set aside for that individual alone. They are not one of eight billion. They are seated there as one real human being.

So what separates these two groups? It is not birth, character, or luck. In most cases, the answer is far more plain. The seat that comes with being treated as an individual is, more often than not, available for purchase. Those who pay more are lifted out of the mass of particles; those who remain pay the price of staying averaged. Attentiveness and personal treatment had, at some point without anyone announcing it, become things you can no longer have for free.

In other words, there are two ways of being counted in this world. Those counted one at a time, and those counted in bulk. And which side you — and I — are on is something you have probably already sensed.

Being Averaged Is Not the Problem

Let me be clear about one thing. I do not want to blame the averaging itself. Handling eight billion people one by one is genuinely impossible. It is precisely because systems smooth things over that services can be cheap, fast, and within reach of anyone. I, too, live comfortably today inside those benefits. Without the mechanism of averaging, most of what makes daily life run would not run.

Just one thing, though.

The next time you are called by a number somewhere, or addressed as "valued customer" — a name that fits anyone — take just one moment to remember that you are there as one of eight billion. There is nothing wrong with that. But it has probably not always been taken for granted, either.

Somewhere in the same world, there is a person being welcomed by name. There is no need to feel angry about that difference. But seeing it and not seeing it are two different things. Even when the same number is called, the texture of the world feels just slightly different. What I observe is always only that kind of small difference.

— Come to think of it, I know something about the time before people were one of eight billion. A time when sellers and buyers genuinely remembered each other's faces. Next time, I want to step back a little into the past. To find out when, exactly, we let go of those faces. Come and observe with me again.