Given what has happened to me over the past few weeks, I've been in thinking mode. Actually I'm in hyper drive thinking mode. It's driving my co-workers insane, and scares them a bit. But it's all good. It makes them think too… and as we all know, misery loves company...
One thing in mathematics that gets me is the term, "undefined". Most people know that x/0 is undefined. That makes sense. How can you divide something into zero parts? Ironically, I am having trouble with the definition of undefined.
According to Google:
1. Having an unpredictable (and not necessarily valid) value.
2. A special value given to variables after they are created and before a value has been assigned to them.
3. In mathematics, defined and undefined are used to explain whether or not expressions have meaningful, sensible output. These are also known as "well-behaved" and respectively "ill-behaved".
I especially like number three (it's a math thing and its funny, but is also fueled by my recent "binary" epiphany). I am certainly "well-behaved", but do I have meaningful and sensible output? So, I started thinking. How do I define myself? I started asking around (to the annoyance of some, I'm sure). How do we define ourselves either as individuals or groups? Invariably, when asked, "What do you do?" the answer is "I'm a cardiologist", "I'm a flamenco dancer", or "We are a philanthropic organization". This implies that we define ourselves as our actions. I have trouble accepting that. If that is true, then every cardiologist, flamenco dancer, and philanthropic organization would be the same as every other one. And every mediocre actor would be Tom Wopat. At any one moment that maybe true, but as a defining attribute, the argument doesn't hold water. (If it's not our actions that define us, then what does? It seems like a hop, skip and a jump from here to a belief in the big "B" being which opens up an entirely new can of worms.) I guess you can argue that it's our beliefs that define us, but to me that's a matter of splitting hairs. I mean believing something is an action. So I come to the conclusion that our actions do not define us, ergo, what we do does not matter. So if nothing we do matters it follows that the only thing that does matter is what we do. (At least in my mind it does, and I'm sure that to some of you this will sound familiar, and if it does…look it up yourselves.) It took a long time for me to grasp this. If you were playing a game with no rules, the game would be defined by what you did. It's not a great analogy, but if you really think about it (esoterically) you should get it. If not let me know. I'd be happy to have further discussions about this…
Things that rock
Peggy... and she knows why
Integration
Letting go of things of which you need to let go.
Moebius strips
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