22.18 Suppress the reductionist bigot

One of the greatest strengths of Western Civilization has been its ability to break the world New Magna Carta Mediumdown into smaller and smaller elements, right down to the subatomic level. This has been useful for science and technology, and has had widespread benefits. But when it is applied in a fundamentalist way, it is deeply harmful. When we only value what we can measure with a number and model in a spreadsheet, we make it impossible to assign value to all of those things in life that are important but not so measurable: love, care, compassion, trust, goodwill, community, security, respect, discipline, togetherness and fairness. To harness science and business in the service of our human potential, we need to adapt and be more creative to measure what we value. Those reductionist bigots who only value what can be reduced to a number are, therefore, a serious obstacle to our common development, and must be suppressed.