Philosophy, Math, Writing, and Knowledge

Philosophy. Math. Writing. Believe it or not, these things are very similar. They all deal with, and transcend, our reality. And true reality. In ancient times, all the mathematicians were philosophers, and vice versa. Math and philosophy are closely related (well, the interesting kind of math. Not the toilsome in-class repetitiveness. I mean the theoretical kind…) and it makes for some very interesting thoughts.
What, you may ask, led me to this intriguing post? Actually, it was Math Circle last Wednesday, combined with a few of my own thoughts and some correlating thoughts from Ancient Greek philosophers presented by the Warnock Chair of Mathematics at the U who has the cool accent. What is math, anyway? It’s actually very hard to define, if you think about it. Physics is the study of why things happen, geography the study of the countries and cultures of the world, but what is math? The dictionary says that math is the study of the relationships among numbers, shapes, and quantities that uses signs, symbols, and proofs and includes arithmetic, algebra, calculus, geometry, and trigonometry. I think math is more than that. Here’s my definition of math: The study of the elements of the world that goes through and around ours, which are represented by numbers, and which we cannot touch save with our minds as an idea, yet which help to shape our reality. Because you see, people only got interested in numbers because they needed something to help them figure out the whys and hows of the world. And that’s where math comes from. But it really was…there, if you know what I mean. People just put…body to it, in our own minds, gave it shape and form. The theories we came up with for it are all part of our quest to understand reality and all that.
Which is why, you know, writing is closely tied to them as well. Every writer is a philosopher, for a writer must, for the time he’s writing, believe in things that mankind has yet to fathom. So they must create (or discover) the truth of the laws of reality, at least for the world they write, and we have only touched at that. Perhaps it’s because we’re not meant to know. Maybe we’re just not ready. And maybe we already do, and we just don’t recognize them for what they are. Because really, what do we know? Perhaps what we think we know is not really what is there. It’s been said that what we see with our eyes is not what is really there, and we are not capable of visualizing what really is. Isn’t that a thought to consider? I think it’s intriguing. Some other important person also said that man is facing a wall, and things happen behind him toward the mouth of the cave. We see shadows and think it’s reality, but reality is actually what’s behind us, making the shadows. We may know far less than we think we do, and there may be more things we have yet to know than we can ever imagine. We will learn what we can, and strive on harder, and brush against what we may. Such is the way of life.

Festive Occasions

Today is October 25, meaning I have two soon-to-arrive occasions to mention. First of all, as many of you may know due to me spouting it worriedly for about two weeks, my older brother is going to be of-age in 5 days. The second of-age. Or the third, counting driving age. (Forgive this mode of talking about reaching age limits; I made up a full system of turning of-ages this morning for my story.) Don’t you think it’s interesting how age matters so much to us? I do. We allow young people to subsequently drive, vote, and have the choice to smoke and drink by age, even though some mature earlier and some much, much later. But what can we do about it? There has to be some way of judging adequacy, correct?


And then there’s the little bit about how adults generally think their intellect is superior to that of young people. No matter that I’ve heard some really ridiculous things out of adults and some very sound things out of kids/teenagers. I happen to think it’s nice that we can be idealist and dream about things that adults dismiss as impossible because they’re too weighed down with all the responsibilities of being adults. Now if the knowledge/experience of the adults could be combined with the idealism of youth…that might produce something productive, wouldn’t you say?

So that’s my small bit of age-talk for today, disregarding the fact that when your only sibling starts to pass milestones you should be very, very worried.

Now, the next occasion is Halloween. I once heard a Brit say that they thought it was strange that kids would go to strangers’ houses and ask for candy and that it sounded like an Americanized form of begging. Did you ever think about how people from far off might think our traditions were totally crazy? I mean, I take Halloween as a fact of October, but apparently that’s not so.

Well, personally I enjoy Halloween, because the candy aspect makes it much easier to forget Halloween is like…a…death…holiday…thing. And it’s nice when you’re little to go around for a night pretending you’re a princess or a Jedi or a ninja dude or a cat. Rudiments of acting, eh? And it feels good to give candy out and make some small child happy. Plus if you know your neighbors it isn’t really to strangers.

On the other hand, when you’re older and you don’t go trick-or-treating and you don’t stay at home handing out candy, what are you to do? It becomes less of a holiday and more of a sit-around-and-be-bored-and-scare-small-children sort of a day. This totally removes the point of it, for the small children at least.

Be as that may, back to the traditions topic. I for one may be going over to the other side of the world over Winter Break. They don’t celebrate Christmas over there! I don’t even know if there’ll be snow! And certainly no Christmas tree, and no fancy-wrapped presents, and no music on the radio. It makes you think about other traditions we don’t know about and how people over the world think our celebrations are weird and us not having some of their holidays is sad. We don’t even know a lot about other people, even in our own countries (I’ve heard some strange things about a certain universal topic for people from our state from people out-of-state). We need to raise cultural awareness so we can be more easily accepting and understand why people have these traditions. I’m opting for a culture class, not just one language with culture (for instance, I take French). I think it would help us all a lot, worldwide. Isn’t that what we want, peace and understanding?



A note to my poor readers…My blog seems to be for thought-producing-exploring purposes. As such, only a few have been really well organized. I apologize for that…I will try to do better in the future.

Positivity

When faced with much pressure and much to worry about, one wonders how one can hold on to some measure of positivity. And one must also reconcile oneself to the fact that positivity is rather necessary. Without it, how could we ever get things done? It would be a world of grim staring at all the things we have to confront in daily life. I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say they’re quite a bit to handle, if you really truly think about it all as a great clump. And sometimes it’s hard to pry oneself away from thinking of it as a great big suffocating clump about to descend on you.


Goodness, that’s very optimistic of me, isn’t it? Breathe deeply…think of it one at a time. And even then sometimes you can’t get it all done. I both dislike and enjoy procrastinating, but as it piles up it’s hard not to just sit there staring at it, like Psyche with the multitude of grains that Venus told her to sort.

All right, enough of being miserable. I will try to be positive. I’ve heard it works nicely, actually. A friend of mine and I have been practicing it abundantly, and I suspect we will be doing so through May, with extra intensity at the end of March. Positivity can make for determination, as well. We’re convinced we’re going to do well, so we are determined to do well (and to ensure the rest of the team does as well so we can achieve our goal). I suspect it’s part of the reason why being positive works so well.

Oh, and what about positive vibes being catching? I wonder if it works if you just think it, or if you have to say and act positively. That would be an interesting experiment, I think. It’s quite obvious it would work if you went around smiling brightly and convincing everyone it would be great, I think. People start to catch it; if you smile enough at someone they’ll smile back, unless they’re really horrible or you’re playing that one game involving not smiling. But you know, just the brain? There are so many, many things we have yet to learn about involving the human brain. So much intriguing mystery. There’s another question for you; how many long years until we know even twice as much as we do now? I notice that every time we seem to solve something, it simply raises more questions. Including now, when I’m just thinking a little. Already there are 5 question marks in this one post.

And there, yet again, let’s be positive. Maybe it won’t be so long. Maybe we will find out things much quicker. Yes…that’s right…be positive……………………………………….



Okay, so pardon for that totally ridiculous and not-making-much-sense post. My brain seems to run in circles around me; I think it can feel the anticipation for the SO year building. Though I sound quite ridiculous, I do indeed mean to be positive. This year will be our year. I promise it.

A Hodgepodge of Something More Mundane

After a few weeks of high and lofty topics, I decided to tone it down a bit this week (actually it was because I didn’t have any amazing revelations this week, but…) and talk about more mundane things. A summary of important things, I guess.
First of all, for instance, I finally overcame my writer’s block for real. I wrote 3 pages today at various times in school, which is rather impressive for me I think. I’m bursting with ideas and I think they’ll last another few chapters. I hope. I’ll probably get bogged down again around the time they reach a city, but oh well. Maybe my luck will hold! Dovie’andi se tovya sagain—It’s time to Roll the Dice. That’s the motto of Shen an Calhar, or the Band of the Red Hand, led by Matrim Cauthon, in the Wheel of Time. I just think it’s snazzy.
Secondly, I’m in rather a bit of a dilemma at the moment. I’m sure all of you know how many things I’m involved in. Well, there’s a certain organization that wants me on their team, and I was considering it earlier in the year until a certain other that takes higher priority said I couldn’t be on both. Well, recently, I was informed by an important person that if I did want to be on the first-mentioned organization, something could be worked out with the second-mentioned one. The thing is, because I was told I couldn’t be on it, I decided to do a certain other thing, which conflicts with this team. And I’m sort of worried about exploding from stress. Most of all I hate having to decide like this, because I was on the team last year and so I do feel loyalty toward it. Lastly, I’m kind of worried about the voices asking why I get an exception. I guess, looking at it, there are more arguments against it than for it. Ah well, I’ll decide this weekend and hope for the best.
Hmmm….what else of interest? I’m rereading a large series of books right now, in preparation for the release of the next one on October 27. As you may know, I make a rather big deal of them. I think they’re helping me with my writer’s block as well. When you can look at a book, see how a master can begin the series, each book, have climaxes for each book, manage characters, change the characters (even if the changes make me sad…I don’t like Rand being so hard), end books and chapters, switch between characters, places, and points of view, and end the series (though this one of course is not there yet), it helps very much indeed. I’d advise anyone trying to write to read thoroughly and then try and get things from it. Not just themes and truths of life and all, but about writing and little tricks and tips. There are quite a lot of them once you start looking.
I guess that about sums up my thoughts at the current moment, disregarding the bit about me being ecstatic at not having a boatload of math homework over the weekend and glad I don’t have much from other classes as well. I’m in a conflicting state of mind right now, I guess. Happy and sad and confused and thoughtful. And with some very interesting dreams to go along with it. That’s life, I guess. Fraught with so many things.

Musings on Writing and Reality

As enigmatic as the title seems, it’s really not so bad. What I mean is that this post will be one of perhaps several collections of thoughts, probably slightly disjointed, and maybe not getting anywhere much. As the title suggests, this one will be some thoughts I had about writing and reality. Warning to readers: It’s going to be rather hypothetical. You’ll see what I mean by that. Well, if you’re ready (or have quit reading already, whichever it might be), here goes…


First of all, a bit of thought on writing. I myself am writing a novel, I guess, and was recently in a bit of a block on about page 32 over a battle scene. I’d been thinking about what I wanted to happen and I realized something about the style of writing, or what was being told, wasn’t quite right, or didn’t give the right feeling away. I thought about it for a while, and then just as I was reading my book (I’m on the Wheel of Time series right now, excellent series everyone, you should read it), I think I figured out what was wrong. They always tell you, “Show, don’t tell.” Oh, I’d been having a lot of detail and all, but as I was reading I realized the more effective method that Jordan uses. He tells everything from the character’s point of view, even though it’s written in 3rd person. Something about showing emotions and reactions the way that character sees it and feels it gives some more life to the thing, and more reality to the people. That’s what I’d been doing wrong—I’d been writing more from an outside perspective, as a bystander would see it, and trying to communicate emotion by expression and how the people said things. While that is effective at times, somehow just showing how one person sees, and feels, and the reasons for their actions, gives a depth and reality to it that can’t be paralleled by simply telling how it looks.

And, of course, fiction needs to seem so much like reality that you can’t tell it much apart, or it should in my perspective. I say this for two reasons. The first is that I read fiction pretty much just to get away from RL. To read about a different place, a different time, a different world, to lose myself in it, is the purpose of this pastime. Maybe I’m a bit too daydreamy, but that’s the way it goes. The day I stop would be the day I find answers, or finally settle down in life, I guess. Maybe.

The second reason is something a little harder to understand, even for me. (It’s where the “hypothetical” comes in.) I always like to think of the worlds in books as real, in a way. Untouchable except through books, and authors and their writings the link between, and the authors historians rather than imaginers. Only perhaps these worlds don’t exist until they think of them, but once they do they are fully fleshed, and the people, and then suddenly it’s real and the author can only gaze down and wait for things to unfold. That would be an interesting explanation for all those times when authors say they didn’t know who was going to die only then when it happened they knew that was how it had to be. And then how long the world lives depends on how many people believe in it, or at least are drawn to it. The thing is, we never really have any way to prove anything. Apart from our senses and what we communicate with each other, and who’s to say our senses aren’t lying? And what does it mean to be real—and how can we even know the world we live in is real the way we think it is?

I guess I shouldn’t branch out so much to create strange paradoxes. It’s just entrancing to think that there’s something more out there than what we see. Likely all of this is just fancy, but it’s nice to think, what if? At times. And indeed, what if? There is so much we still do not know about, well, everything, and so it will be for a long time, I think. When the world still holds so many secrets, why not let your daydreaming run wild? It is part of what makes us human, after all. We have done it for thousands of years. Remember not to fall so far from our beginnings that you lose your wonder. As was once said, “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.” Let your dreams run.

A Long-Expected Party (Slightly Belated)

As those of you who know me well know, I have a fond liking for The Lord of the Rings (hereafter known as LotR) and everything to do with it. It’s one of my only serious obsessions. Its meaning, its characters, its story, its writing…I could go on for days, but that really isn’t the point. Today I mean to exonerate just a few of the characters and a bit of the story (though knowing how I ramble, it may…branch out, if you take my meaning).

The reason for this is that Tuesday, September 22, was, as we Ringers call it, Tolkien day, the birthday of the two most adored Bagginses, Frodo and Bilbo. The Bagginses’ birthday is a milestone event every year, and I’ve heard that many really obsessive people (that’s right, I’m only the tip of the iceberg) hold parties on it. So, I guess it’s all right for me to write this blog post to celebrate it.

I’ll start off with a bit of rambling on my thoughts about the two. Each has starred in his own story, Bilbo in his (relatively) small adventure and Frodo in his monumental one. Of course, both had a fair amount of help, Bilbo the dwarves (Thorin, Fili, Kili, Balin, Dwalin, Glòin, Òin, Bombur, Dori, Ori, Nori, Bifur, and Bofur, I believe) as well as Gandalf, and Frodo had the Fellowship (Gandalf, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn, and Boromir) but mostly and paramountly he had dear Sam. Oh, I’m not saying that Gandalf’s wisdom and Aragorn’s sword and Legolas’s bow and Gimli’s axe and all that didn’t help, at least for the first part, but it is Sam’s steadfastness and loyalty that sticks in our minds as the thing that helped Frodo most. It’s one of the books’ greatest themes, I think, that of a friend resolving to be true no matter what, even as he watches Frodo sink under the Ring’s influence. However, as has been said many times, no matter how much Sam could help the burden was still Frodo’s to bear, and it was still his courage that saved Middle-Earth (even though it wasn’t really him who managed to destroy the Ring in the end). I’m one of those of the mind that Sam probably couldn’t have carried the Ring all the way to Mordor if he’d been the one. Frodo is unique in the characteristics he possesses—a Halfling with other stuff than food and gaiety on his mind (which seem to be the hobbits’ happiest delights), but still after peace, not arrogant, only wanting to get the job done, hardy, courageous, and much more. Coupling this with his background and the way he came into his task, it becomes plain that this was fate, as far as that goes. And the chance that the Ring and the task of bearing it would fall into his hands was a miracle for that world.

Of course, it was indeed by means of his cousin Bilbo that Frodo had it. Bilbo’s courage in this matter was of a different sort. When he first had it, he did not know it was much more than a ring with the power to make one unseen, which he found very useful. But as the years went by, and Sauron stirred, and the Ring responded, it was him that was affected. “Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread,” he said. But he went on hardily as it took its toll, and when the time had come, he managed to give the Ring away, to break the bond. Such courage, both of theirs, is worth much more than many men’s swords.

And what courage they had is what made them so great. Though the victory of the forces of good over Sauron’s evil was not solely theirs, theirs was the main quest, to bring the Ring to Mount Doom, Orodruin, Amon Amarth. And they did it.

I’ve only mentioned a slight part of the epic, a slight part of the characters, and the tiniest bit of meaning contained in the trilogy in this post. I’ll probably write more about these books this year. Truly, though, if you want to know more, if it draws you, as it should, just get out there and read the books. You won’t regret it.

Good Fiction

The list of books I’ve read in my life is extensive. The list of books I count as my favorites is smaller, yet still extensive. But a thought came to me yesterday (while speaking with a friend, actually). The list of books that made me cry is much shorter. And perhaps is a more accurate judge of the elusive title of “good fiction”. Closer, at least, I think.

Now, I don’t intend this to be confused with “well-written” or “with good plot” or anything like that. True, much of what comes under “good fiction” probably does have those characteristics. But then, many books do. The thought that struck me, though, is this… “Good fiction” is that which made an impact on you. Fiction is our way of communicating truth in a more creative way. A book I recently read mentioned the difference between being “truth” and being “truthful”. Nonfiction, historical accounts, those are “truth”. Fiction is, or at least should be, “truthful”—a message of truth in a body that may not be true. Good fiction is that which contains fundamental messages of truth—the ones that remind us of life, death, and what matters in between. Good fiction is that which contains such powerful examples of what’s important to everyone that it touches you deeply. In my case, anything that touches me deeply is very likely to make me cry. The books I’ve read that have small, wrinkled, circular deformations (in other words, tearmarks) on their pages bear some of what I think are the most important themes in human life, history, and mind. Isn’t that what good fiction is? It should teach us, remind us through our wonder and excitement that what holds in the world it describes also holds for us here. Good fiction is that which makes us better, more understanding, kinder people—closer to our own truths—through stories.

You know, stories have always held power. The title of this blog itself is “Truth, Myth, Legend”—commemorating how legend surrounds a seed of truth, and how that seed transforms into a legend. Every culture has its own stories. Since ages ago stories have been used to teach the young their principles. And they still teach older people, in different forms, a constant reminder; they use different images, but many of the messages are still the same. It reminds me of what I just read in Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol, how the ancients knew what people are rediscovering today. The view through the eyes of children, what seems long ago, is often more pure and right than that is seen later in life; things happen, those views get twisted, doubts surface. Stories remain as guideposts from the people that rediscovered it themselves to bring you back on the path, to help you rediscover what you’ve known all along.

And that brings me back to the main subject of this entry. They’re still stories, yes, still fiction, still created by the imagination (or perhaps, as I may discuss in a later entry, recorded by an eye that sees farther than the mind can believe); but they have truth, and power. And good fiction is that which has both the right truth, and the right power. It’s that which reminds you of things forgotten so forcibly that it brings tears to your eyes—tears of pain, tears of remembrance, tears of memory, tears of joy. Good fiction holds at least some of the keys to our search for innate peace.