We are so often tempted to bowl over people with gigantic numbers. Like 24,000 children die from hunger every day.
It's one of those shocking facts like these:
- One billion people live on less than a dollar a day.
- 39,000 people in our community were diagnosed with cancer this month.
- One in every eight Americans struggles with hunger.
Really, facts like these are so utterly, jaw-droppingly overwhelming, they numb us.
That's the problem with them. They're so big they have no emotional meaning. We can't picture 24,000 children, much less that many children dying day after day. While we know it's a tragic reality, we can only grasp it as an abstraction. And abstractions don't move people to action.
Think about it: If we were moved by numbers, everyone would care about the same problems. We'd all work together to solve the world's biggest problem. Then we'd start in on the second biggest problem.
As it is, we can't even agree on what the problems are, because each of us is moved by different issues, motivated by emotional experiences that connect us to those issues. I want wipe out Parkinson's Disease because I watched it dismantle the body and mind of a loved one. You want to help people get access to safe water because you've seen what the unsafe stuff does to them. Everyone gives for personal reasons like that.
You can fight against reality by piling on the numbers, or you can work with it by giving people emotion-sized bits of information that can move them to action.
In my book, the one kind of numerical fact that can do this is the type that causes us to visualize one person. Like this: The average age of a homeless person in America: 9 years old.
(I don't know the source of this fact, and I haven't been able to confirm it. So don't use me as a source!)
