And it often isn't number one. There is something magical about being number one in everything, something, anything. We can sell our soul, our integrity, and our future, to be number one when the chance comes. You shall know them by their fruits. We are polled to death by the government, magazines, surveys, the Internet.
Endless data is collected for marketing advantage.
It reduces us to an anonymous herd of people with whom we are compared and grouped, alienating us from communion. We do not rejoice in the richness of differences, enjoying with childlike curiosity the opinions and attitudes of others. Statistics make us anxious about what we should believe, what others believe, who determines what ought to be believed, or thought, or voted for, or done. To do what is popular is not always right. And roles are funny things.