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Being the writer I am (or say I am), my texts usually spring from a simple idea, which I find accessible and interesting, but as I progress, they become more and more complicated, like labyrinths, and end up being something very different from what it was at the beginning. For example, at this very moment, I have just come up with a crazy idea that turns what I plan to write on its head. I’ll decide in the end if I should leave it or not. The idea is that for God – and pardon the comparison – the things of creation came to Him in the same way I have just described; that is, in the beginning for Him there existed the verb (that is, the Word), in possession of which He believed that everything would be as easy as saying “Let there be light.” However, He began to see from that moment on that things became increasingly complicated for Him. To start with, He had to extract the light from the darkness, so day and night arose, something He was unprepared for. Surely, that led Him to do strange things, such as separating “the waters from the waters,” a phrase that still no one has managed to decipher. (Perhaps it is indecipherable precisely because it is part of a creative process.) Afterwards, everything continued like that, between clarity and shadows, until it became this creation called Reality (which, like any work of creation, is understandable and simultaneously incomprehensible, a characteristic that endows it with strength, menace, magic, and beauty). God’s uncertainty – like that of every author – is demonstrated in the fact that after each paragraph… sorry… each day, He looked to see if what He had done was good. Of course, being God, everything went well for Him – even the “waters separated from the waters” – unlike someone who has to correct repeatedly and endlessly.
The thing is, I’ve been coming up with one of those simple ideas I wanted to write about for a long time, and as soon as I started to do it, I didn’t write more than five or six paragraphs before it became complicated, and more and more, until it reached dimensions that I had never foreseen. And the subject was not for less (the reader can tell me if this is true). The text, as far as I wrote before stopping to make this clarification, read as follows:
In terms of knowledge, nothing seems more suspicious to me than the famous lists of ten. You see, when I find that a particular subject is subdivided into ten points, for example, The Ten Steps to Certain Success, The Ten Principles of Happiness, or The Ten Keys to Neuroscience to Improve Learning, I wonder in amazement how nature, society, mind, and spirit manage to stick so precisely to the human decimal system – based, by the way, on something essentially random, that is, on the number of fingers on our hands, which, if we look at evolution, could also have been six, eight, or twelve, which would have changed our numerical basis.
The ten rules for…, the ten truths of…, the ten lies, the ten secrets, the ten questions, paths, goals… all in numbers of ten, as if regularity were the constant in our existence! (Ours and our environment, including, of course, galaxies and stars: Or haven’t you heard of The Ten Mysteries of the Quantum Universe?).
However, clearly, this is not the case; things usually do not come in tens, so, as I say, it is enough for me to see the number ten preceding a list to doubt its seriousness (or not to generalize), this at least puts me on alert. Certainly, this type of list fulfills several functions, some of which, I admit, may have harmless, even laudable, sides. One is the mnemonic, whose use is quite understandable as a priority to facilitate memory. The most iconic case is that of the Ten Commandments. We will talk about their sacred character later, but let’s start with the simplest thing: remembering. Ten, as we all know, is a memorable number, so the biblical decalogue shows us God as a great teacher who simplifies things for his fledgling people at times when they need things to be simplified.
The mnemonic function fully justifies, in some cases, the apparent arbitrariness of a list. Another example (for some also sacred, although it sounds mundane and topical) is the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding, which I found on the internet (and which some of us would well accept as the eleventh commandment). Here, the nobility of the content is worth everything for the objective to be fulfilled; that is, if it succeeds, that parents and society as a whole understand and attach more value to breastfeeding, go ahead!
In addition to the mnemonic function, lists of ten also help us describe the components of a process that we have not yet mastered or do not understand. Suppose I want to make a list of the steps that need to be taken to write an essay like this (a matter about which, right off the bat, I have no idea). In that case, it will be easier for me if I set a goal for a number, even if it is arbitrary (like the number ten), and I push myself to achieve it, trying to include everything I know (but I still don’t know what I know) without omitting anything important.
However, the fact is that the very intention of attaining ten can be a significant disadvantage if we force ourselves to complete that number when there is no more to say. You may aim for ten, but you must know how to stop on time. This seems to be the lesson that the Italian writer and thinker Umberto Eco left us when he wrote Decalogue of the Good Librarian; he stopped at point number eight so as not to spoil his brilliant text.
A similar version of the use of decalogue occurs if I attempt to describe something that no one is clear about, or I am simply inventing: Ten Steps to Becoming a Millionaire, Ten Steps to Aging, Ten Steps to Seducing the Person You Like. The only difference between this version and the previous one is that there is nothing real here to tell us when it is time to stop. Therefore, to alleviate this lack, ten becomes a practical limit because otherwise, the list could become endless since we are writing as many occurrences as come to mind. I don’t want to offend anyone, but the truth is that this last type of “lists of ten” is the most frequent.
And so we come to the most usual of the functions on our lists, the marketing function. This one leverages the fact that, archetypally, the number ten gives the impression of being something complete, concluded, so its mere enunciation produces a significant impact (clearly, nine or eleven commandments would not have been so impactful). It is, therefore, a kind of conceptual magic that, depending on its purpose, may or may not be praiseworthy; it may or may not be harmless.
An example of innocuous use is a simple enumeration: Ten Things Your Computer Can Do Better Than You, Ten Things Your Cat Can Do Better Than You (I’m making up this one about the cat). Something a little more serious was the use by Frank Wilczeck, the Nobel Prize winner in physics, in his book The Ten Keys to Reality, where he arbitrarily rounded off the figure; however, being a popular science text that aspires to simplicity, the number ten provides appeal without distorting what the author feels is truthful content. The list is an engaging way to speak or write in these cases. I think the same happens with these other examples I found: Ten Tips for Good Comraderie in the Classroom, Ten Tips to Encourage Reading, and Ten Tips for Taking Care of Students’ Health.
However, it must be emphasized that this advertising and decorative way of speaking does not suit everyone. I’m very embarrassed to mess with instances of noble origin, but hey, no way: When the United Nations Organization, whose voice alone should make us take notice, without the need for gimmicks, titles one of its priority programs The Ten Principles of the Global Compact, it seems to me that it trivializes the issue, as if to say, “Let’s see if they listen to me,” a frank declaration of impotence (It’s like seeing Superman with a little sign on his chest that says: “Work Finished”). The cause is noble, but the marketing is neither good nor worthy.
I’m somewhat exaggerating, but I emphasize that lists of ten can detract from the seriousness of those excluded in the universe of the topic: Ten Values for the 21st Century, Ten Principles of the Culture of Peace. I believe that what is achieved with all this – almost always in advertising – is to tilt attention more towards the message than the content. In many cases, the impact of the number even disguises its underlying banality. A mere aura of importance replaces true value. And so we come to the famous Top Ten. Its logic is this: only what exists inside its bounds matters. The fact that a country is one of the ten most powerful economies in the world makes sense. Beyond these, the others are insignificant; being the eleventh or the one hundred and ninety-seventh is the same. The same goes for actresses, actors, musicians, songs, models, cars, painters, novels, restaurants, and tourist centers – to name the first ten I can think of.
And so we arrive at the famous Top Ten lists. Their logic is this: only what falls within their radius matters. A country’s ranking as one of the ten most powerful economies in the world makes sense. Outside of them, it’s all the same: being the eleventh or the one hundred and ninety-seventh is the same. And the same goes for actresses, actors, musicians, songs, models, cars, painters, novels, restaurants, resorts… to name just the top ten I can think of.
Unfortunately, we have not reached the end. Something even worse than all this, the cherry on the cake, the highest point, lies where the banal tries to imitate the sublime. To address it, we must first return to the Ten Commandments and attend to that point we left behind: the sacred aspect, that which surrounds the Moses’s Decalogue with a primordial and shocking mystery, and which makes the ten not only justified but unquestionable (as we all know, the commandments could not be more or less).
Strangely, one of the characteristics of the aura of the sacred is that it can be reproduced relatively easily in more comfortable, not-so-demanding, and fearsome versions. I am talking about the ready-made cosmogonies that flood the spiritual “offerings” in our days, which seem created out of thin air by leaders who have not parted seas or spent even four days with their people in the desert (let alone forty years).
I don’t want to offend anyone, especially because I recognize the seriousness of some representatives of what we call pseudosciences or New Age spiritualities. (Suffice it for me, as an example, the Argentine astrologer Eugenio Carutti, whose thinking I encountered briefly a few years ago in the Monterrey International Book Fair, and who, at least by what I heard from him, deserved all my respect.) Continuing with our topic, however, it is difficult for me not to sound the red alert for charlatanism in the face of “lists of ten” that, as I say, imitate the aura of sacredness but only encourage ignorance and fanaticism. I will not cite examples so as not to offend without the proper argumentation. Still, I will invent some so the reader can understand what I mean: The Ten Doors of the Astral Mansion, Ten Molecular Secrets of Cosmic Water, The Ten Quantum Commandments…
Summarizing: The worship of figures should put us on alert. The setting in tens (which later, by the way, extends to other numbers) envelops us more and more, largely thanks to its apparent naturalness, that is, to the fact that it does nothing more than respond to our “natural” tendency to count to ten, with which, to top it all, enthrones our anthropocentrism: Reality adapts to the number of our fingers. This is true even concerning exuberant nature, which is becoming increasingly limited: We start with the top ten marine, terrestrial, aerial, mammal, plant, and insect species, and continue with vegetables, fruits, seeds, etc.
There is undoubtedly a charm to lists, the fantasy of an order. However, nowadays, this order (if it exists) seems too easy, superficial, alien to the real contents, and based on apparently harmless lists, which obscures the tendency to quantify everything. (Perhaps the most dramatic example for us educators is school evaluations, not by chance based above all on the number ten and its extension to one hundred: The assumption is that knowledge must always be quantifiable, and it must be exposed, risen to the surface, overcoming the intimate and subjective, and revealing itself, preferably in round numbers). Because of this substitution of knowledge for superstition, reality, human nature, problems, and solutions must become evident: “objectives,” adapted to the human decimal structure, adapted to us, responding to our vision of the world and demonstrating that our anthropocentrism is correct.
Because knowledge is replaced with a kind of numerological superstition, reality, human nature, problems, and solutions must become visible, evident, and “objective”; they must conform to the human decimal structure, adapt to us, respond to our worldview, and prove our narcissism correct. Thus, there arises a belief in a kind of magic in which things are arranged for us. Finally, since this form of appropriation of the world is based on a mental operation, the conclusion is clear: if reality conforms to our mind, it is not surprising that we can govern it with our mind.
Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I think what I’m saying makes sense. To verify this, it occurs to me to go back to the beginning, where God created us in His image and likeness and where, in fact, He created the world with us in mind. Curiously, in the current era, in which spirituality is set aside, human beings are dedicated as never before to making the world also in our image and likeness, to the point of feeling that we have inspired the entire creation. It is no longer an anthropocentrism but something else: an anthropo-ego-centrism…
I approach the conclusion of this text feeling again that I am exaggerating, that all this numbering is not as serious as I depict it in my exaltation (and my anti-advertising hatred); that it is really pure fashion, like children who have learned to count to ten and run around happy like they have a new toy (“Stop calling the attempts of the human being to evolve fashionable”, said Hegel). After all, there is nothing strange about us trying to put a little order in this challenging reality. In the end, God is to blame for launching us into His creation too soon, and what is worse, with the enormous defect of knowing prematurely that we can know everything. Yes, God, the divine writer, is to blame for having resolved the plot of His story with that Forbidden Tree.
Let us be patient, then; let us go calmly. Let’s count to ten before we plunge into anguish and mourn for our era. That, at the end of the day, is my best opinion.
Translation by: Daniel Wetta
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
