Saturday, January 16, 2010

An Appeal to the Apex.

Thank you, Marty. Apparently, I happen to be a zero. Not a zero in a negative, down-on-myself sort of way; but a zero in the sense that all things happen to be balanced on both sides of me, the apex. In accordance, there also exist ones, and twos, threes and infinitely many orders beyond: but there is only one zero. Now, when I found out that I was a zero, I was taken slightly aback. Why zero?

Over tennis, it was determined that a one is concerned with the minutia, the details; and by contrast, zero is interested in homeostasis, the natural balance, principally neutral to concern for small and mundane details. Much like the first recognized “lover of wisdom” (philo – love, sophy – wisdom)the philosopher Thales in the 500s BCE that fell into a well while gazing into the heavens. The mundane, quite literally, was of no concern to him. Though as a result, Thales is attributed to deriving the first cosmology, inventing the federalist state, and coining the word: soul.

Now, of ones, perhaps it is less important that we understand what they are as what they represent. Imagine the shape of the nautilus, the spiral-shaped shell that helps to explain the naturally occurring pattern of fractals. There is an origin, and points that expand from the origin in a natural pattern of dispersion that creates nearly concentric circles that never fully repeat, accounting for the spiral. If you plot points on this spiral, the ones are the first point in the spiral, from the origin. The one sets the pace and deviation of all subsequent points from the origin, so its placement and magnitude are quite important.

To suggest the existence of twos and threes and the continuation of this infinite system, is to necessarily dismiss the plausibility of a dualistic nature of existence, i.e. all that is and all that is not. As a zero, perhaps it is because I am less concerned with all that is not, and give credence to metaphysics that causes me to pause on the thought of an infinitely increasing system of magnitudes. Perhaps though, as previously noted, zero is the apex. Perhaps the duality still exists, with a perfectly opposed spiral in the opposite direction. Not a double helix, per se, but a center and two opposed spirals, meeting at one origin, the apex. Diametric opposition, to account for the duality of nature and all else.

Hereclitus speaks in fragments about similar opposition, in fact the very existence of one defines its antithesis. Death defines life, color defines blankness. To be alive is to be free of death, to exhibit color is to escape blankness. The crux of this idea is that Logos, the account, is the stuff that holds these opposites together, like the arms of a balance, the zero, the apex.

The importance of the account is of the highest order. The account is the reconciliation of action and reality, its accuracy: justice. The account is uniquely human, the accurate account is truth. The idea of virtue rests squarely upon the shoulders of the account, and its necessity to humanity. Without account, there is no story; without story, there is no history; without history, there is no wisdom. The zero is Logos.

Concern for the minutia then, defines all which is not zero, beginning with one and conversely, negative one. These dual infinite systems then, spiral predicatively outward, encompassing 3s, 10s, 47s, 9,472s and beyond as well as their inverses, toward two indistinct extremes, limits that are not limits: and each set of magnitudes defines the limits for a uniquely different account, with zero in the center acting as the architect.

The suggestion then is this, operating at the extremes of any given system pushes the operator to the furthest possible point from zero and thus balance, account and logos. Perhaps the virtues then, are embodied in the zero, and the pinnacle of wisdom lies at the apex.