prime time whym

      

Merry, you can't do that!

Do what?

Saunter in and abolish prime numbers.

Abolish?  Who said anything about abolishing them?

I seem to recall you stating that they're all divisible by other numbers.

Only where in-finity is concerned.

Precisely. Surely you realise that statements like that are beyond the pale.

Beyond the what?

The pale: unacceptable, indecent, unseemly...

absurd?

absurd,  and actually offensive.

Oh I really excelled myself this time, did I not?

This is hardly a joking matter.

I know, but I don't see what I can do. The truth is indeed, sometimes, rude, even indecent, no matter how vehemently I tell it to behave itself. It doesn't respect our compartmentalisations.

Our what?

Oh you know -- the way we divide things up and organise knowledge, ideas, data by compartments rather than keeping it all in one mega data pool of all that is.

Merry, you're attempting to shift the blame. Regardless of how we compartmentalise data, it's still monstrous to suggest prime numbers are anything but prime. You might as well say a table can be just as easily a fish or a chair. These boundaries are sacrosanct.

Absolutely - otherwise 3D would collapse and you'd have nothing but chaos.

So?

So what?

So - you've contradicted yourself.

I have?

Obviously. You've just admitted that you're statement leads to chaos - that it's inadmissible.

Oh - that's what you mean.

Excuse me?

I was trying to understand how you meant I was contradicting myself.

Well it's self-evident isn't it. You can't have chaos and order, can you.

No?

Obviously. Not at the same time.

Look Zie - if we observe nature around us - we're always going to see examples of chaos and order moving hand in hand - like the water flowing in a river, the waves striking a shoreline, the wind blowing and weather fronts in the atmosphere. Look within yourself and any organism and you'll see the same - at every level - cellular, brain waves, blood glucose levels, you name it.

What are you getting at Merry? Just because nature has a certain degree of chaos...

a certain degree? Where did you get that notion from? Either it's chaos or it isn't. Besides - do you really imagine you can have order without chaos, or chaos without order? Do you not see that the relationship between the finite and in-finity is fundamental, whether the rational mind is comfortable with apparently contradictory paradox or not.

So you're now saying that the compartmental boundaries are not sacrosanct - that a chair might as well be a table, that 13 might as well be 7, or somehow divisible?

I suppose I am - but honestly - I wish you wouldn't take it all so seriously. We're never going to get anywhere if you insist on being so serious about things - especially words. The next thing, you'll be trying to define them I expect.

Well I don't see how we're going to get things straight in our minds, how we're to get to the bottom of things if we're not serious about it.

True.

True?

True - you don't see - which is an honest admission - but I do.

You do?

Yes of course. We're going to start by having a little fun, adding a little humour to the discussion, turning things on their head and accepting that nothing is quite what it seems - especially things as categorical as prime numbers. Surely you can see Zie, that they're teasing you - encouraging you to be categorical yourself - to ignore the fact that all things are in fact, to a certain extent relative - even prime numbers.

!!? To a certain extent? How on earth can you quantify the extent to which prime numbers are "relatively so"? I've never heard such nonsense in all my life.

Neither have I, when you put it that way. It sounds ridiculous doesn't it - and yet I don't see how we can get around it.

Around what?

The fact that things get dreadfully out of step when we start to consider in-finity - especially when we do so without a sense of humour and humility.

Oh - it's humility now, is it?

Yes, I believe that too is an important part of the equation. Without humility we tend to take ourselves too seriously, and our prime numbers become even more prickly, rigid and self-absorbed.

You're talking about them Merry as if they're alive.

Well yes, I suppose I am.

Don't you think you should avoid giving them human qualities - let's try to be scientific, objective...

We can try but it's not going to get us very far.

What do you mean?

As soon as we start using anything - even numbers - they become an extension of our mind, our conscious awareness, they take on a life of their own. We can make them heavy and intractable if we treat them with too much reverence, if we essentially deify them, or we can keep them in a healthy natural relationship with everything else - if we bear in mind the limitations of the 3D paradigm.

Er...

You see your difficulty lies in the assumption that there's nothing beyond 3D - that in-finity is merely a mathematical concept which crops up now and then and is somehow containable.

Er...

Which is understandable - as that's the defining bias within the 3D system we're presently investigating so enthusiastically.

Er...

In order to make this 3D thing work we had to essentially wed ourselves to it mind, body and soul. It wasn't enough to do it merely intellectually. We had to essentially commit ourselves to being 3D creatures, even if it killed us - which sooner or later it invariably did - for that way we really succeeded in making it work - in achieving a critical mass, a massiveness to our 3D.

Which in fact it lacks, you're saying?

Which it has as long as we remain massively committed to upholding, sustaining it - with mind, body and soul, for the purpose of continuing the experiment.

I'm not sure I like you referring to this reality as "an experiment". It makes it sound somewhat two dimensional - like we're just testing a hypothesis.

Agreed. It does sound somewhat offensive - but words are never quite going to fit either way when you're stepping outside the frame and considering the paradigm itself. That's why we need a little humour or humility. Failing that we require a romantic sense of adventure - a passionate desire to journey beyond the evidently absurd limits of what 3D presents itself as. Once we get excited about confronting the simple, obviously absurd sounding truth, no matter what, no matter how - then we reach escape velocity - then our plane takes to the air - then we finally get to see how all those contradictions in fact make perfect sense - once we're able to un-dimensionalise.

Un-dimensionalise?

De-compartmentalise - to go beyond the compartments, to dissolve them without necessarily destroying them - for otherwise we'll ourselves get hopelessly lost in in-finity.

And you think you can do that?

No.

Oh.

Thinking you can do something is never enough. You have to feel it, and feeling it you start to know you can do it - and then you figure out how.

Oh.

And you've figured it out?

It's already figured out - like I said - nature itself is full of examples of chaos and order co-existing in easy collaborative harmony.

Oh.

The only thing stopping us from seeing the above and learning the lessons is our rational mind - which is compulsively committed to serving and perpetuating the existing paradigm - the status quo.

Oh.

So, screw it.

Uh?

Screw it - add a little twist - a little rotation, a little spin, flare, torque - a little poetry in motion. That way we get back to considering dynamic systems co-integrating, coalescing, harmonising howsoever nature itself can and does.

Weak Merry. Nice sounding words Merry, but nothing substantial.

Absolutely. Nothing whatsoever - but therein lies the rub.

It does?

Absolutely - in no-thing whatsoever.

Er...

No-thing - in the absence of thingness, the fading away of things, the deconsolidation of thing.

Oh God.

In the relationship between thing and me, between mind and matter, between er...

Er?

er... one

er... two

er... three

bite sized packets of in-finity

You're not making sense Merry - can you try to speak more clearly.

Absolutely - just as soon as we've transitioned no-thing whatsoever. Hold on Zie - we'll be through ni a minute or two but it's going to feel a bit weird.

Oh dear - I don't like the sound of this.

Courage Zie - be of courage... one... er... two... er... three...

by the way Zie, you'll find the manual over there on the shelf

oh thanks

you'll have to dance your way over there - straight lines don't really work up here - try to relax and enjoy the process - then you'll figure it out - try not to be impatient - time is not really a factor - in fact - time or those impatient feelings of time pressing down - the urge, the need to rush, to get there, to finish what you're doing - these are part and parcel of life in 3D but don't cut here. Think of it as moving forwards on ice. Pushing your foot backwards as you normally do won't generate forward thrust. You need to move obliquely. you need to accept the multi-directionalness of things - you're doing fine - and amazingly - from a 3D perspective you're now flying through a wall in your study and fading out of matter - apparently rising up wispily into the sky over that purported cherry tree, to the extent that any thing can be thought to thing.

Oh

indeed. Oh

mmm - I like this - it feels so full, so complete, so...

mmm, yes, so natural

chaos in order

interdivisible primes

ah

ahhhh

who would have thought that dancing could be so...

feelingful

so whymy whym

indeed