from the glacier

First, a preface to a preface. Do you ever have to take a step back from writing to get those "creative juices" flowing again? I do, and for those who don't know, on the glacier, that means cracking another beer. That having been accomplished, leads me to a preface (by way of a quote):

Maybe I should have title this "against Kodiak" for, although he has my respect, I think we have a disagreement of some proportion. Another preface would be to read his post, or more fully, the several comments to the post. So basically I am stepping out on a limb, speaking of neither math nor science (except maybe incidentally), but rather starting with some modern local history. Those of you who have become accustomed to my rants will have to swallow your surprise at this, and everyone else will have to take a big leap of faith that I may know something more than just equations. Again, the preface is way too long... maybe I should just leave off with a preface. . .

The year was 1997. The location was Southern California. The underground was the NMS People's Revolutionary Council. It rained incessantly. A great man (with me and a fifth of Vodka) created a plan. A nine month plan. Well, for those of you who remember, it met with mixed results, and ultimately, the plan disbanded the NMS.

That short trip down memory lane is meant to illustrate, comically, that the endeavors of humanity can frequently be short-sighted. Kodiak himself remarked that: "the nine-month plan turned into a five-year plan." We were poking fun at the communist five year plan, that never seemed to get accomplished (shades of Orwell). But I think that if we look back at this it will teach us, as a microcosm, a valuable truth in the macrocosm. (footnote - the problem with Catholics and politics - a later rant)

What have I learned? Don't drink? Hardly. The kernel of truth I found was that if you attack an effect of a greater cause in order to achieve an end, but the cause you attack is not the ultimate cause of the deficiency you are trying to correct, you will fail. I admit it, the NMS was a diversion that I invented based off of an old "Melvins" poster in my sister's house. I was trying to correct the feeling of ennui and being trapped in a "fishbowl", I was fighting the weather. But a "secret" society based loosely on parodying communists did not go to the heart of that ennui. It failed. Ennui came back. Look at the modern American regime. I hate the phrase "culture of death" so I will invent a new one: "unculture of bad math" or, to shorten it, "2=3". Since we live in a 2=3 world, many people - well meaning, pious, generally good people - try to fight it. They say "abortion is the only issue I vote on". Or, when confronted by a politician "is he pro-life?" Or they talk about the constitution, or the founding fathers, or natural law, or the rule of law. Yes, the falling away from all of these things has created a 2=3 regime. But I deny, and will affirm my denial, that these things are the ultimate cause. [time to get those creative juices flowing] Physicists and Mathematicians (see, I couldn't stay away) run the culture. Once science (or at least the habits of thought and common terminology of science) filters its way into society, society changes. So where does 2=3 come from? Not divorce, not abortion, not the "living constitution", not rock music, not gay rights, animal rights, right-wingers, left-wingers, not positive law, not legislating judges, not any other political ill you can name. What do you have historically in math and science at the beginning of the twentieth century? BAD MATH. Set theory. Quantum mechanics and relativity understood without philosophical grounding. Sentential calculus (symbolic logic devoid of meaning in the symbols). Truth statements. Geometry as analysis. Consistency becomes the Holy Grail of mathematicians - not truth. Lucidity fails. Quote Poincare - even subject to his own criticism (written in 1908):

All the efforts that have been made to upset this order, and to reduce mathematical induction to the rules of logic, have ended in failure, but poorly disguised by the use of a language inaccessible to the uninitiated.
Roughly seventy years later we have the 2=3 world coming to full bloom (with Roe v. Wade if you want to make that your starting point). So, what are we to do? Go to the ballot box and vote in only "good" people? Lobby the government to have the constitution place on an altar of unassailable footing, so that no "interpretations" counter to the founding fathers can be made? Do we form little towns hidden from the rest of the world (see Pennsylvania) so we can live isolated and not have to deal with the outside world? ("who is my neighbor?") Shoot your T.V.? No.

Absolutely not.

Fuck the nine month plan. Fuck the five year plan. Fuck voting in or out. But, most of all, fuck the mathematicians. Over, that is. We need to inundate ourselves in their inaccessible language. Learn it, breathe it, speak it - destroy it. Shift the footing of physics back to philosophy - by understanding it. Use their arguments against themselves. It can be done. Make Heisenberg kneel to Thomas. Einstein curtsy to Aristotle. And this, once completed, spreads: in our children, our schools and colleges, our media, our newspapers, our everyday speech. Instead of "survival of the fittest" in media you hear "for the natural end" or "for the common good".

Not a four year plan of an administration, but a SEVENTY year plan of global domination.