We propose to call our familiar everyday world the "world of measurement" in order to highlight the central position held by assessments, scales, standards, grades, and comparisons. In his story of the everyday, each of us strives for success, hoping to arrive at a better place than where we are. On our path to achieving a goal we inevitably encounter obstacles. Some of the more familiar ones, aside from the people, are scarcities of the time, money, power, love, resources, and inner strength.
All the manifestations of the world of measurement--the winning and losing, the gaining of acceptance and the threatened rejection, the raised hopes and the dash into despair--all are based on a single assumption that is hidden from our awareness. The assumption is that life is about staying alive and making it through--surviving in a world of scarcity and peril. Even when life is at its best in the measurement world, this assumption is the backdrop for the play, and, like the invisible box around the nine dots, it keeps the universe of possibility out of view.
Certain responses are better suited than others to an environment where survival is the issue, all of which are prevalent in the world of measurement. Alertness to danger, a clever strategic min, an eye for assessing friend and foe, a knack for judging strength and weakness, the know-how to take possession of resources, a measure of mistrust, and a good dollop of fear are some of the qualities that will safeguard us. Keeping our armor intact is of critical importance as well, which means resisting any challenge to our personal viewpoint.
We also feel more secure when we can identify objects and determine their location. An indication of this is that the term minefield stands as a universally appreciated metaphor for danger. If feels safer to deal with reality as though it were fixed, as though people, ideas, and situations can be fully known and measured.
We grow up in a world of measurement, and in this world, we get to know each other and things by measuring them, and by comparing and contrasting them. We know a child as compared to other children, a performance of a Puccini aria by a local tenor as contrasted to one sung by Pavarotti, or a company's year-end statement as it stacks up to earlier projections. In order to be in a position to assess, judge, and report on circumstances, the individual stand back, identifying himself, and by extension his group, as separate from others. That opinionated "little voice in the head" is almost always speaking from Measurement Central. Life in the measurement world seems to be arranged in hierarchies: some groups, people, bodies, places, and ideas seem better or more powerful than others. Lines appear, dividing in inside from an outside: some people, races, and organizations are safer and more desirable to belong to than others. There are only so many pieces of the pie.
The dramatic action in this world of success and failure has to do with overcoming odds and prevailing, or being acknowledged and included. Virtually every children's book. every made-for-television special follows the pattern. Competition is the vehicle to success, and metaphors based on competitive sports and war applied to almost any situation. Conversations among friends chronicle personal trials and triumphs. Certain feelings mirror the ups and downs of fortune in the world of measurement: love for our own, for instance, and sympathy for those weaker than we are; fear, anger, and despair at losing; and, of course, the exhilaration of having come out on top.
Just as virtually everybody adds the clause within the square formed by the outer dots to the instructions for the nine-dot puzzle; virtually everybody, whether living in the lap of luxury or in diminished circumstances, wakes up in the morning with the unseen assumption that life is about the struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of limited resources.
"Hey, bring some lines out here!"
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