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6. Words that Organize and That Command
- Northwestern University Press
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28 6 Words That Organize and That Command Words order our action: they organize our environment by segmenting it and demarcating paths and instrumental connections and by invoking possibilities and predicting consequences. They signal what has to be safeguarded, nurtured, repaired, or built, and they sort out resources and urgencies. Our words are not only indicative or informative but also imperative: they launch and command our action or inaction. Numbers disconnected from anything but one another—1, 2, 100, 1,000, 1,000,000—can function as an organizing method. Numbers are the preeminent means of military organization for aggressive wars of inde finite expansion, for example, those of the great khans who thundered across the steppes of central Asia over the centuries.1 Levying ten men from each village, a hundred from each town or each clan, constitutes an army. To each company a hundred horses are requisitioned; each town along the march is required to furnish ten beef cattle, a hundred measures of wheat and barley. The army will march across the steppe twenty miles each day. Five hundred cavalrymen will be sent to the east of the enemy camp, five hundred to the west. At the end of a raid or battle, losses will be expressed in numbers: we lost a hundred; the enemy lost five hundred. Numbering and arithmetic organize multinational corporations whose production is diversified and whose assembly plants are located where labor and transportation costs are cheapest. They can organize individuals who determine what to major in in college on the basis of accessibility and salaries of various occupations, what percentage of their salaries to spend on the purchase of a house, what percentage for the education of their children, how many children to have, when to retire, and where to spend the rest of their days. ...