Dinner and Pi with the Moon

I swear the moon's been following me. Or maybe I have been following it. Or maybe we've been following each other, both trying to understand.

Pi is a letter. Pi is a number. The letter pi is greek, and the number pi is unknown. I guess you could say that even the letter is unknown as it will never know itself. It can't give itself meaning and a purpose, that is where we come in. The number pi, in mathematics, represents the ratio of a circle's perimeter to it's radius. What's interesting is that the circle is not a polygon as it does not have any measurable sides. What's even more intriguing is that we don't know exactly what that number is as it just keeps computing and computing for what seems to be longer than eternity, even though we label it a mathematical constant, meaning that it will never change. Are we admitting that we will never understand it? I guess we don't have to understand all of it to figure out how it works i.e. how we can make it work with other principles and concepts.

A few weeks ago me and a good friend of mine were trying to find sine. Not trying to compute exercies with it, rather trying to refind it, rediscover the concept, create it again.

We couldn't do it. We had never learned it in math class. And I think this brings out a very interesting point. What's with all these finished products? For some reason we have all these things that are done: concepts of the various school subjects, concepts of religion, the universe, language, etc. But for some reason we never study them. We do, however, have an excuse: philosophy. Philosophy makes us feel good because we know that if we ever wanted to know that we don't know that we would have a way. But I don't think one subject, whatever that may be, will ever to be able to tell us the whole story. That's why it's the whole story: many parts, the same story nonetheless.

So this pi that we think we know is used to play with triangles. It works, it works perfectly, even if we don't understand it. In fact, we can't understand it, because if we do its purpose will cease to exist. And I think that this can be applied again to the concept of a god. Something that we make up in order to understand, an "imaginary friend for adults," and we use this idea to put an end to our thinking. We die, in a way, by giving ourselves this "new life."

But I really wanted to talk about all these ends and wonder why the means and the struggles are left in the dark. Let's take history, a great subject for debate (as well as a common one in my ramblings). We study the greeks, the romans, the egyptians, the history of art, of music, of science. Modern history, contemporary history, modern-contemporary history, contemporary-modern history, as well as contemporary-modern history of the art, music, and science of ancient greeks, romans, and egyptians. But for some reason we never really study in depth our concept of "history." We tried to define it last time, with peculiar results. Are there other ways to understand things without asking questions? And again we find that opposites have to exist at the same time in order for them to be valid i.e. life and death, universal concepts and impermanence, good and bad, relative relativity, etc. These ideas, our ideas, that we have seen, are one in the same. We take the circle and make it in to a line because it's easier to control thought that way. We don't give ourselves an out: just a range. And once we get to one extreme in our quest for knowledge and truth (just pick any -ism out there), we're forced to turn back, even though the next step (in the circle) is right in front of us. We have made that wall. Is it easier that way? I think it makes it easier for us to see it as difficult, which is why I think we feel it's a virture to be balanced, to stay in the middle of the range of the line that we took from the circle. But if we have this circle, this trust in ourselves and our ideas, then we'll always be in the middle. But I think it's important to first liberate ourselves from the line, without being self-righteous about it. Maybe that's what I mean when I say freedom.

I'm still studying hieroglyphics at the university (the egyptology class), and they are really interesting. They're not just symbols, they also represent phonetic sounds. There's a grammar and an intricate way of saying and expressing things that is both similar to what we are doing at this very moment as well as completely another way of looking at language. My mind has a field day trying to find the egyptian in me.

I guess what I really wanted to say was: we create to understand. We understand by manipulating our creations. We then study the by-products of our creations without ever studying our creations themselves. We can't seperate ourselves from our ideas; nothing is independent. Nothing, in this case, is free. Not even freedom.

Talk about a 180 (which just happens to be pi radians). That was fun. Till next time.

-Anthony