The concept of "mental inflaction"

Reading the daily newspapers give you the chance to catch every day a new concept.

Well, maybe is not completely new...but sometimes the way writers call an idea, it is simply phenomenal.

Yesterday I was browsing something in the "Daily New York Metro". Every time I see there is an article written by Elliot Kallan, I stop myself and enjoy his writing and way to exploit the reality around us.

At this time, he wrote sometime about the "mental inflaction". I want just to report what was in the newspaper. It definetely give you an idea of "big numbers", USA economy crisis...and..."the human mindset". Hope you will enjoy as much as I did. Take care Gianpy

"With the introduction of the $700 billion credit bailout plan, America now faces a major crisis. No, not the economy. That thing's dead, and we need to move on and leave it behind us. I'm speaking of the uncontrolled growth of numbers. Almost daily, America is being confronted with bigger and bigger numbers, 700 billion being only the most recent example. Numbers that size used to appear only in academic texts and horror movies. The average Joe rested easy knowing he'd never have to think in more than four digits. But those innocent days are over.

America has losts its ability to tell when a number is too big. The problem started when "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" moved from a prime time to a day time. Suddenly a million dollars was no longer an amazing, unattainable figure but just something handed out between Judge Judy verdicts. From there it's been a slippery slope. $10 billion once shocked us, but now it's merely the monthly rate for a midsized war. And until recently, nobody had every even counted as high as $700 billion, but after a few weeks of hearing it bandled about on TV we got used it. Now $700 billion even feel kind of quaint, like buying a hot dog for a nickel.

It's a process called "Mental inflaction" in which the brain becomes desenitized to large numbers and readjusts its awareness of scale. As a result, America is losing its understanding of proper amounts of things. A trillion dollar deficit? Hey, that' just one bad day on Wall Street, we will make it back tomorrow. I fear if this numerical inflaction continues, we'll soon see 74 hours movies, 30,000-page books and eggs sold in packages of 1.5 million. Because frankly, in the face of 700 billion, only numbers that big make sense.

There is only one solution. The government must put a cap on counting and cease our production of new numbers until a normale sense of magnitude returns. This won't be popular. Still, in this new era of increased regulation, I think people will accept such a drastic measure. Otherwise, our nation runs the risk of collapsing under the weight of these numbers, leaving us with nothing we can truly count on, except our fingers."