Well if we keep going this way, we'll just keep going deeper into Hell. Hell is a state on earth. A state that can be changed, a state that need not be permanent as if we had to go on suffering in it infinitely as if it were the right thing to do. I haven't read Dante's Hell in its entirety, but I imagine it to be about the different levels of existence and states of being humans may experience while they are on the planet earth.

You see we can go into a positive direction and/or negative direction. Wether we add, subtract or multiply a group of numbers the overall remaining result can be positive or negative. Why do I bring this up? Because I find that the way the number system is formed it becomes or ought to be a way to comprehend ourselves better. The number system was discovered. It is a representation of naturally existing conditions which can be comprehended and percieved by the individuals who are governed by its resulting order or the lack of it.

I have read alot of Aristotle and Plato, which by the way I have enjoyed to a certain extent. One of the things I remember is that Aristotle had said that art is an imitation of nature and if mathematics is an art then mathematics is a imitation of nature assuming what he said was true. What aristotle claimed is a logical proposition that could be expressed as follows, which by the way will also serve to show you how one can represent nature with mathematics. So if A is neccessarily a Rn, then M is also a Rn, if M is an A. In plain english now, So if Art (A) is an imitation of Nature(Rn), then Math (M) is also a imitation of nature(RN), if Math(M) is an art (A).

Aristotle said that art is an imitation of nature and I say, more appropriately for the times that art is a representation of nature.

Representations aren't always accurate when we are dealing with imperfect beings. It would be wise to remember that there is out of necessity a potential for error since humans are not perfect. But we often do not like to admit that we can or are wrong or we often take things to be true without question. This is not logical, though it could be understood logically. We as humans for the sake of our species and in fact to help maintain balance as opposed to imbalance need to, amongst other things, strengthen our faculty of logic and so it follows remember that we might be wrong and remember that it is possible to misrepresent things which exist. We do ourselves justice by ackowledging the reality of things. We don't do ourselves justice when we refuse to become contructively critical about the way we think, do things, about our own representations and our lives in general.

My friend asked me to clarify what I meant when I said that art is a representation of nature and so I have been trying and realizing that it is not neccessarily obvious. I, often, use the number system as an example to illustrate my point. I do have to mention, knowing how it feels not be credited for something that I deserved to be credited for. There was this man named Ronald Jump who had been influenced by many people himself as we all are but who had worked out this ideological quinary numeral set. Please let me explain, it gets alot simpler. He had used our human-made number system and associated the numbers to certain things or groups of things that exist in the objective world, not only in our minds perse.

For example and to break it down, he had associated the number zero to the universe, the number one with life, the number two with mind, the number three with art, the number four with expression and it continued. His reasoning based partly upon the work of philosophers, mathematicians and other savvy individuals was a continuation of their work. But also it has logic built into it since the number system was built using logic and intuition as it was pulled or put together by representing the natural world through symbols: numbers. The number system is a whole as all things are part of the whole wether we include them as part of that whole or not. So using ronald Jump's representation one would say you can't have life without the universe or you can't have art without a mind, life, or universe for that matter. It's an accurate representation of the metaphysical ordering of the universe.

The logic is that each number follows another number such as one precedes two or three follows two. Also, moving from zero to the next digit either up towards positive infinity or down to negative infinity the space between each number is equal. The latter further reinforces my belief in the equality of beings, the nature ordered equality between individuals, individuals being units of one. Also, how can we forget?! The number system just wouldn't be without zero. I mean the number system has at its center let's say the symbol zero. The number system is part of the art of mathematics and art would not be without the universe. As the number system, just would not be if it weren't for the universe primarily, and other things namely, life, mind, art and expression which are borne in it. Are you getting the foundation of one of our most prized arts: mathematics. It is a collection of symbols which have served to represent a particular ordering of our universe amongst other purposes it has had.

Why do I think and what have I come to discover about the reasons people seem so reluctant to learn mathematics and even when they do try it is very trying on their psyche?
Remember I was talking about how representations are not always acurate specifically when dealing with imperfect human beings. Well, we may be imperfect beings now but that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't be perfect beings. How do we know if we can or not? The truth is, I suppose, that we don't really know or rather it is not knowledge that we can verify through our own private experiences. It is difficult or seemingly impossible to imagine perfect beings especially if we think that it is not possible despite the fact that there is no way currently to know. Since, we are not perfect and according to history we haven't been either.

I think that perfection in reference to humans would be a position that we could align ourselves to, a position that would bring about balance within and without. It is something that could not be fully achieved without the help of others and it certainly would be difficult to achieve without knowing what it means to be balanced to the external within.

It is ridiculous, ignorant or sheer stupidity to hope that individuals will continue absolutely to learn or keep living, not becoming extinct, if on a whole we fail to learn the most fundamental of lessons such as respect for life and the neccessity thereof, for example.

So why am I talking about these things if this post is about the challenges people are facing in learning such a seemingly important subject such as mathematics?!
Because if we consider for a moment what mathematics is and what it has been used for or what it hasn't been used for. We could easily lose respect for it, be upset with it, blame it, lose interest in it and thus fail to learn it. I, by far, am not trying to say that if you fail a math test, you will come to learn math. Oh no that is not what I mean at all.
Let's assume for the sake of my argument that the number system is a way that people have chosen and continue to live by, a set of symbols, which are merely a representation of the natural odering of the place we were born into. Through art and expression, not to mention the mind, life and the universe to include everything and nothing in particular, people fashioned a way to understand and communicate the world to themselves: the number system. The number system was not haphazardly strung together. No, it was built upon and is based upon logical considerations that the everyday population has tended to take for granted or ignored such as the distance between the individual digits and symbols is always equal and always equal to one. This ought not to be taken for granted since concepts such as these namely equality are even the foundation of our legal system despite the injustice or lack of equality present within it.

So here it is. We use and let ourselves be guided by this somewhat accurate respresentation of the ordering of the universe and yet we are not fully or even functionally upholding the values and logical ordering implicit in its expression. The number system we use is based on equality amongst other things and yet the way we humans have structured things we have made it so that there is inequality. People are born into it all the time it seems. We have confused the order of things. We left our keys somewhere and we don't remember where. We humans have taken it upon ourselves to make ourselves Gods sorta speak-- We pollute the sources of life that we need to survive. We think and are starting to believe that we really need money to survive. Money is a form of currency associated to the representation humans have made called the money system. Money is a product of art. There would be no money without the universe, nor life for that matter. So then why do we spend so much time acquiring money at the expense of our lives literally.

So again the question, why do people have difficulty learning mathematics as a whole?

It seems there are a million reasons... It's boring. It's too hard. It doesn't make sense. People lack the motivation to learn it and in general it could be because there is very little recognition that the number system is a system of symbols used to communicate and based upon timeless concepts, we have yet to respect that which the number system was taken from so there is little respect for it as a result.

I was not told in full detail why math is so important or why it would be. I have however heard that math is universal, that math is the center of our world and so I say I give math a failing grade of zero.

It seems as though I hear a cashier in the distance or someone saying or thinking when they are at a cashier's desk that they have no change they get zero back. How seemingly not encouraging.

There's no secret that we were born into a particular time that has been framed where we are governed by a system that cannot support itself forever, atleast not in the shape that it is now. We cannot honesly continue to make money and acquire things all the while polluting our sources of life (earth, water, air, --) , not forever anyway that much I can be sure of. What are we waiting for, the shit to hit the fan? We know it will hit, if we don't do nothing about it and nobody likes to get hit by shit so why don't we do anything. Well, there's many reason for that isn't there.

Some of them being... I hear people say... Well, it's only shit, nothing I haven't experienced before.

Atleast, it's only shit, it could have been a stove. What if I try to stop the shit from hitting the fan and I fail. It's better not to try then to try and fail. I might solve this whole problem by starting to like shit being on me. I am merely making a metaphor out of the shit hitting the fan being the equivalent except in different terms to the current apathy that people have towards changing the ways we have been going about our business. The comments I put forth are similar to the ones said by people in reference to changing the ways we do things. Humans are lazy. They have difficulty envisioning themselves doing things differently since it is mighty comfortable to continue to do things how we have "always" done them. There seems to be little love of learning, changing. We are conservative. we have lost hope. Our conception of faith has been reduced to nothing.



posted by Jeniffer Just @ 3:00 PM 0 comments