Zero, One, & Infinity....
Butt-head: Uhhhh...
I'm, like, angry at numbers.
Beavis: Yeah, there's like, too many of them and stuff.
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The following will not enlighten you in any way.
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The distance between zero and one is defined easily enough when you're talking
about apples or oranges. Either you have one or you don't. But abstract the
meaning out of units of measurement of concrete objects, enter the world of
numbers as having inherent meanings, and then the difference between zero and
one is a vastly different story. Why, from zero to one: that's the difference
between something and nothing! It's, incidentally, the only thing a computer is
actually capable of reading.
Mathematically speaking, disregarding long boring proofs, there isn't that much
to it. The difference or distance is found via a rather straightforward method:
1 - 0 = 1
The distance is one. But one what?
Once you drop the specific unit and substitute just a vague 1, you're seemingly
making a statement that there is SOMETHING rather than NOTHING. (You just have
to drop the need to say that there's "one something," since then you'd
only be stating how many SOMETHINGs you're measuring! Forget that apple and
orange stuff for the time. I mean, who really cares?) It seems to me that the
distance between NOTHING and SOMETHING is INFINITE.
Infinity not being technically a number doesn't stop the human psyche from
clinging to the need to think of it warmly as a factual, set mathematical
constant. It seems to follow easily enough from belief in God. God is infinite.
God is everywhere. God is one. Etc. Right there, through belief in God, humans
often equate one with infinity. "The infinite oneness" or whathaveyou.
Here, I suppose, should flow a long list of vague spiritual new age quotations
that I am choosing to save for when they are actually useful in explaining
something, which is never.
If you were to follow this line of thought and try to express it mathematically,
the result would be as follows. The distance between 0 and 1 is infinite, right?
So...
1 - 0 = Infinity
And conversely...
Infinity + 0 = 1
And since quite factually...
1 - 0 = 1
Assuming the first two equations are also true, then...
Infinity = 1
Which just seems so infinitely wrong, I doubt it would ever occur to
anyone with any mathematical expertise to pay any attention to it. Why would
they? What would they be hoping to accomplish?
They shouldn't and they are right not to, because it is wrong. Rather, what it
proves is that zero (though it is very practical for some uses) isn't really a
number, and it can't be worked with the way other numbers are. This is already
known by the fact that you can't divide by it.
Infinity is clearly also not a number, and the only way to give them a value is
to think of them in a spatial sense.
*Dimensional Travel*
Infinity is equal to the DOMAIN of physical existence. Zero is the threshold
(PORTAL) between this domain and others. ONE is the smallest unit that fits
through the portal. All other numbers are essentially building blocks of one.
*Death*
Infinity is equal to the DOMAIN of life. Zero is the threshold (PORTAL) between
this domain and others, i.e. death. ONE can be set to many different values,
such as one life, or one human life, or all of life, or all of human life, etc.
*Spiritualism*
ONE equals the DOMAIN of your body's physical existence. INFINITY equals the
spiritual world in which the soul permanently resides. ZERO is, unfortunately,
exceedingly difficult to define with such a pie-in-the-sky model of life. Just
like everyone else who lives in the modern world, spiritual people must define
ZERO somehow. The normal conclusion, after years of kicking and screaming and
trying to set zero as equal to various things that make no sense, is ZERO = ME
(YOU). Something about "ego death" or some such thing. That, or they
take the western approach and just focus on Jesus as ZERO, ONE, and
INFINITY. I hear that works wonders if you don't want to get lost in too many
abstract concepts.
*Filthy Living*
ZERO is set to various portals or holes, into which ONE is variously inserted.
This produces a generally enjoyable feeling of INFINITY. You know what I'm
talking about.
*Insanity*
This can take form in any number of specific incorrect definitions. Set zero
equal to one, and you just fall off the Earth out into space where you might
just die if you're not careful. One fix for this that they came up with in India
is to try to absorb this problem by setting infinity equal to a cow, and then
making everything else fit around that. Insanity cannot exist in such an
abstract all-inclusive realm. Or, looked at from another perspective, what could
be insane in a world where EVERYTHING is insane?
*Sex*
Set ONE as equal to an orgasm, and you end up unable to actually achieve it
because then ZERO becomes no orgasm, and (as you should know by now) the
distance between zero and one is infinite. If you set yourself as ONE or ZERO
and your partner as the opposite, then once more...the space between you is
infinite, which isn't terribly desirable for the sex act.
A better strategy is to define yourself plus your partner as ONE, and your
collective genitalia as either infinite or zero (the difference between
"making love" and "boning like animals").
An even better strategy still (though difficult in practice) is to define
yourself as ZERO and your partner as ZERO, and your interaction and net result
as either ONE or INFINITE. The trouble here is, if you do this too well, you end
up with snotty little kids running around breaking your furniture and eating
your food and not listening to you.
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The preceding did not enlighten you in any way.
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If you were paying very close attention, you should have learned the following:
1. I need to get laid.
That's about it really. This is why I never talk about philosophy. It makes me
feel like I'm about to fall off the earth through some kind of portal, and that
feeling makes me either really distressed or really angry. Either way, it makes
me lose my senses of honesty, humility, and humor, which are the things that
make life worth living. So I get a bite to eat, try to forget this stuff, and
limit the majority of my conversations to deciding what sucks.
I hereby decree that math sucks. I rule. If you're laughing, so do you.
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© 2006 FussyPucker.