OPPINIONATED FOUL MOUTHED RANT ALERT!
I was shit at maths and english at school and therefore rejected all education. For english, I could not spell – I was taught a phenetic system, ITA, which taught me how not to spell. With maths, it was memorising the times tables – I could temember the tune but not the words. Nor did anybody think to explain why I needed any of this crap. It was spelling and tables are the only important thing you dont know them “you are remedial!” Well fuck you!
Oh such happy memories of the best years ofmy life. but on learning some of the modells of NLP, my being a bit backwards was both easy to explain and remedy. Actually, in hindsight, some of the teachers (and by no means all) were really good. Its just that they did not know and were fighting against a system intent on social complience. I see this now.
As it turnes out i wasnt so bad at the 3Rs afterall. The point of all this bitching, and to cut to the chase, is that what is commonly taught and understood as being maths, is not what I have discovered maths to be. Is maths about algebra, arithmetic, differential equations, statistical tests, memorising times or log tables. Partially, but those have dominated our conceptual clusterings. Maths includes such, but is much more, and moreover is much more interesting!
English is not about spelling punctuation and grammar (again these are elements) but as my latter english teacher illuminaeed me, about getting whats in your head to the end of a pen. To me, that was sage, it released me from my hell of formality (and I greatfully thank you). he said he didnt get maths, afterall those non-prodegies are either good at one or the other, right?
but now I gather that the endpoint is the same: simply to communicate an idea. To get a brainchild dowwn be it in the corpus of knowledge, or on the back of a beermat. Whats the difference? Whether I’ m trying to tell everybody else what im thinking or wrestling with some of my own conceptual deamoms.
Well, if i wanted to explain something to someone else, then it helps if we talk the language. The more people I want to tell, who otherwise would have no idea of what im ranting about, then clarty would call far more formality: a lingua franca. id have to adhere to something suitable. Spelling, punctuation, grammar, algebra, and so on are simply conversational conventions, and not the whole of the thing.
Now, the puzzle occurs: what if I ponder on something that is new enough not toconform to some traditional format? Or rather that tudging my idea into such would result in a convoluted, contrived mess compared with cranking out something, that to my mind at least, does really make sense?
Should i shoehorn thouht into kludgy conventional symbolism, or should i go out on a limb, risking the wrath of the guardians of mathematical symbolic traditionalism?
Fuck traditionalism, thats pride playing with your mind. This is my mind – i’ll do what i want to. Also bearing in mind the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis that language constrains thought, then the occasional break from adherence could actually be healthy.
So what. Maths is about numbers and latin and greek symbols and stuff. No, its about conveying thought (even ifonly to ones-self), and whether it is any eutopean, asian, ancient or made up typeface or symbol is not televant.
Its like as-if I had some kind of agendum here. Well “duh…” Im going to make up shit that helps me suss out stuff, and i dont care if i nick it from ancient egyptian, alcclemy, or just draw what makes sence to me.
But the big Q here, is whether anyone else can stomach it. Imake up symbolism that works for me – that is proper maths. At the moment various symbolic mash-ups do yhe job. And thre os no need to conform.
Leave a Reply