The spectacle represents a total realignment of priorities, a total inversion of life. According to Debord and Vaneigem, 'life' in the spectacle is a victory of the image over reality, of the false over the true, the passive over the active, and the quantitative over the qualitative. Since the spectacle is characterized not by dialectic but by the domination of the whole of life by one of its parts, all qualities therefore becomes quantities. Debord and Vaneigem don't condemn the existence of numbers or economic theory – they merely point out that such quantitative elements have their place, and that place does not equal the whole of human existence. They lament the colonization of humanity and the deconsecration of daily life into mere economics, "From the point of view of constraint, daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out" (Vaneigem 30). Here the Situationist indignation is threefold. Not only must everyday life submit to the laws of economics, it loses its sacredness through the act of comparison with an economic system. Furthermore, the economic system in question is a system of insults, instituted for the free exchange of unpleasantry and malfeasance. And who can deny the discomfort, the tension, the anxiety around other people? – the reluctance to ask the time in a supermarket or smile at a crossing pedestrian. Who doesn't feel excluded and pathetic when passing a group of laughing strangers – when more often that not the very laughter that shames us really serves to diffuse the itching discomfort of a group of 'friends'. This is the reality of humiliation – few analysts care to prove it statistically – a reality felt every day.

And here also I find the tentacles of the quantitative creeping into my consciousness. Did I cite enough examples? What if they were hypothetical? On what page did Vaneigem mention these atrocities? Is there a refutation I should be addressing?

The answers to all such questions must be, of course, unsatisfactory. Exactly how many examples would prove without a doubt that the true currency of our society is the insult? Because the spectacle is a quantitative beast, it only speaks the language of quantity, and asks for all criticisms to be delivered in its own language. Indeed, the spectacle invites discussion on a quantitative level – Stalin, Roosevelt, Yeltsin, and Clinton all would tell you more people were 'wealthier' at the end of their reigns than at the beginning, and all could produce the statistics to prove it. To escape this illusion, I petition for a qualitative critique – based upon aspects of life and love that modern surveying hasn't quite been able to categorize. A qualitative critique, you say? Impossible! Not scientific enough. Unreliable. I'm sorry, please go home, take some soma, and try again tomorrow.

More incredible is the vast span of this tyranny. Gradually and sometimes not-so-gradually, all our thoughts translate into the language of the quantitative. According to Vaneigem, "the only reconstruction of human relationships envisaged is one based on precisely this economic model" (Vaneigem 30). Thus, after not hearing from him in over a decade, my father’s first e-mail to me asks what I would like for my birthday. And with economic model comes economic language – did the idea of 'sunk cost' factor into your last break-up? Was how long you were together more telling than how uncomfortably? Is it worth investing your time in a friendship tonight, or are there more productive things you could be doing? Why do parents waste one hundred fifty thousand dollars for a 'good education'? – they're hoping for a good return on investment! In such a language, no vocabulary exists for the honest appreciation of others' humanity: what is economic becomes what is.

Vaneigem's most biting example of this transformation is the handshake: "the handshake ties and unties the knot of encounters... with a liberality that makes up for a lack of conviction... its commercial overtones are not hard to find: the handshake clinches a deal" (Vaneigem 32-33). It's the perfect allegory for the reduction of human relationships to economic imperative. We don't share a handshake, like we might a meal or an embrace, but exchange one. The minimum contact necessary to preserve the illusion that I want to touch you, with a glorious power struggle built-in. Limp or Firm, two hands or one, too short or too long. All such considerations allow us to evaluate each other – whether partner or adversary – to measure each other. Indeed, the very idea of measuring a person's humanity stinks of the tyranny of the quantitative. It is a stench Vaneigem fiercely opposes: "human relationships can hardly be discussed in terms of more or less tolerable conditions, more or less indignities. Qualification is irrelevant. Do insults like 'wog' or 'nigger' hurt more than a word of command? When he is summoned, told off, or ordered around by a policeman, a boss, an authority, who doesn't feel deep down, in moments of lucidity, that he is a darkie and a gook?" (Vaneigem 36)

Though tempting, I don’t Vaneigem's statement as a contribution to the futile discussion of priorities for the modern left: racism, classism, or anti-authoritarianism. Rather, Vaneigem presents multiple ways of relating to people without humanity, and shows the ridiculousness of comparison. Submission to illegitimate authority wounds one's humanity just as deeply as a racist slur – the feeling of humiliation is the same. Vaneigem's quip about 'moments of lucidity' implies once again that until the reversal of

perspective – the moments when one truly understands the extent of power's manipulation are few and far between – we react with horror to outright racism but calmly and unquestioningly do as we're told; such is the delusion of power's perspective. The areas of abrasive, ugly social interaction (racist hiring policies) merely serve to desensitize us to wealth of insults we must accept blindly to keep society running smoothly (1st class boarding calls).

The rule of quantity over quality in the spectacle leaves no room for the lived experience of life. To demonstrate this thesis of "Down Quantity Street", Vaneigem evokes the pre-spectacular life of the idler, "enjoying at his leisure everything that can make passivity sweet". This man appreciates "a seraglio of beautiful women, witty and sophisticated friends, subtle drugs, exotic meals, brutal liquors, and sultry perfumes" for their luxurious quality. He does not need more and more beautiful women, more and more subtle drugs, nor an immense variety of friends – only the immediate enrichment of his life concerns him. Noble as he is, he lives out his life purely, immediately, and subjectively, without thoughts of measuring or comparing his happiness.

Why, then, are there no idlers today? Why do we measure our experiences instead of live them? According to Vaneigem's theory of alienation, descended from Marx and Lukacs, "only objects can be measured, which is why exchange always reifies" (Vaneigem 89). As soon as woman measures her relationship to joy, her alcohol, or her friends, her very relationships become reified. As soon as it makes sense to ask if spending an afternoon with the kids is worth missing three hours of salary, all afternoons are cheapened. Quality reduces to mere quantity. In this understanding, all experiences considered through the lens of exchange value are no longer worth living, and the only real living takes place in the past: "the memories of days gone by will be our consolation for living on" (Vaneigem 89). The present reality becomes a world without pleasure, for in the spectacle, quantity rules. As such, the pursuit of pleasure becomes the pleasure of pursuit, a disintegration of pleasure into "a panting succession of mechanical gestures, and one hopes in vain that their rhythm will speed up enough to reach even the semblance of orgasm" (Vaneigem 89). Vaneigem despairs that the disfigured husk of spectacular pleasure will never again reach orgasm, which he considers "the perfect model of communication" (Vaneigem 248). In the place of true pleasure, Vaneigem faces its doppelganger: "the quantitative Eros of speed, novelty, and love-against-the-clock disfigures the real face of pleasure everywhere" (Vaneigem 89). Real pleasure, the pleasure of experiences enjoyed for their quality, unmediated by exchange or the economy of time, is nowhere to be seen, its visage clipped from old photographs like Kundera's famous Commissar.

The Real Lie Here, the lie behind the disappearance of pleasure, is the spectacle's destruction of everything apart from itself. The possibility of a dialogue of ideas, of dialectic, of change, of future – all drowned in spectacular cement. By substituting quantity for quality, the spectacle created the "powerful illusion that a mere aggregate of possibilities was the basis of a multidimensional world" (Vaneigem 89). A truly multidimensional world, in which choices exist beyond mere spectacular antagonisms, would be the death of the spectacle. In the choices we are sold, every team has the same sponsor: Pepsi versus Coke, Bush versus Gore, Capitalism versus Communism, Peace versus War – the spectacle always comes out on top.

Once again, as we saw with both reification and survival, the ideology of quantity can only be fought by love. Love has no inherent quantity; it's not a zero-sum game and it knows no upper bound. Rarely, you meet one of those people who understands these qualities of love, who understands the game of loving, and refuses to ration out affection like so many bread lines. Such a person loves and loves and loves – loves so many people that our first cynical response is disbelief: "how can she really care that much"? But revolutionary, boundless, love persists beyond cynicism, carries an irrefutable authenticity, an authenticity that breaks the chains of the quantitative ideology. Because love is rooted in the qualitative, it provides a perspective from which to analyze the senseless drive for quantity – for ever increasing friends, salaries, sports cars, and GNP. It is the only chink in "the system of commercial exchange that has come to govern all of people's everyday relations with themselves and with their fellows". Through love, we can relate to each other not as objects, reified by exchange – the notion that I'm worth only x amount of your time – but as subjects, immeasurable in our capacity to love. Love stops the insipid "measure of man" that equates one with her "capacity to produce or to make others produce, to consume or to make others consume" and resurrects a geometry of the qualitative, which equates woman with none other than herself.

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