TrueLife - 2 Dimensions, 3 Dimensions, IV

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

In the late 1800’s, we were looking at todays problems.. https://linktr.ee/TrueLifepodcast

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze. The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini, check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the True Life podcast. It's Friday. It looks like we're made it.

I hope that you are having a beautiful morning. I hope the birds are singing out there. I hope that you got a phone call that made your day or perhaps the person with whom you are in love. Leaned over, gave you a little kiss, and just smiled one of those smiles that melts your heart. What are we going to do today, George? Well, it's a great question.

Thanks for asking. And because it's Friday, I got something extra special for you. It's a return to the classics with a new policy. code of paint on it. It's something that is, oh, I don't know. Let's call it the fourth dimension. Let's call it a fourth dimension of humor,

satire, logic, combined into a science fiction classic that has entertained generations. Are you curious? Are you ready to learn and understand that the way in which the world works is like a corkscrew? It may not. History may not.

may not repeat, but it definitely rhymes. And it's like my grandfather used to say, George, you handsome young devil, if you want a new idea, read a really old book. And that is what we are going to look at today, ladies and gentlemen. This is an old classic from our friend Edwin Abbott from the late 1800s.

I'd like to give you a little bit of background here. This is a book called Flatland. And for those of you who are aware of it, you will understand how beautiful of a little book this is. Let me give you a little bit more background here. Besides being fascinating reading, Flatland will help you, me, our children to understand certain aspects of modern science better than most texts. It is a very clear description of how three-dimensional objects, must be perceptible to two-dimensional beings. It will offer you a very helpful technique for imagining

and visualizing multidimensional forms, such as tesseracts and hyperspheres. I think it's more relevant than ever right now. I think that much like the turn of the century, we are at a new turn of a new century. And we are, sometimes I believe we're on the cusp of understanding, another dimension. Doesn't it seem that the world doesn't make sense in so many ways right now? And if you think about the way the world evolves, the way that we have been taught that things evolve,

or if you, I mean, we could take it to a world of linguistics where, you know what, let's just do this. Let's just do a little thought experiment here. I want you to think of an animal that no one has ever seen. I want you to make it up in your head. Can you do that? maybe it has the body of a wolf in the head of a shark and it has the teeth of a donkey. It also has 10 arms and it has a razor spines down its back like an old dinosaur. Now that's an animal that no one has seen before. However, it's not really a new animal. It's parts of other animals that have been jumbled together.

Do you see what I'm doing here? I'm trying to make the point that if we want a new idea, we must take apart old ideas and put them together in a new way. You see, the way in which we arrange the variables, be it an equation or a sentence or a daily task, that can have a radically different outcome. The dog bit Johnny, Johnny bit the dog. call my phone number, you get me. But if you change one number in that string of numbers, you

could get someone around the world. So it's, on the topic of new ideas, it's not so much about trying to sit here and have a brand new idea. It's more about taking bits and pieces from other ideas and putting them together in a way that they have not yet been put together. It's usually small little shifts. It's usually the rearrangement of one or two variables. that yield an incredible new standard for an old idea. And I think that this book is important because I think we need to revisit the world of dimensions. I think we're on the cusp of putting together

or synthesizing many ideas into one. I think we are about to, I think we've discovered the Ariadne thread that will help us through the labyrinth. And I want you to think about this. To some people, when you hear the story of Theseus in the minotaur, and you think, oh, well, thank God for Ariadne. Otherwise, he wouldn't have that thread to find his way out. But in reality, it was just a ball of string. He used a ball of string

to find his way through what was supposed to be something that was a place where you get forever lost. The labyrinth. The labyrinth and being lost and chased by the minotaur. But with a ball of string, he found his way. Now, maybe that ball of string is like a coach, or maybe that ball of string is like a guide and it helps you on your way.

But it's still just a ball of string. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we as society are in the labyrinth, we're lost, but we've had this ball of string all along. It is the books, it is the classics,

it is the teachers, it is the mentors, it is the guides that if we're willing to look will show us the way. Okay, I know that was a little bit of meandering. Let's get into Flatland, And here we go.

Here's a little introduction. Here is a stirring adventure in pure mathematics, a fantasy of strange spaces, peopled by geometrical figures, geometrical figures that think and speak and have all too human emotions. This is no trifling tale of science fiction. Its aim is to instruct,

and it is written with subtle artistry. Start it, and you will fall under its spell. if you are young and heart and the sense of wonder still stirs within. You, you will read without pause till the end, is regretfully reached. Yet you will not guess when the tale was written, nor by what manner of man. In these days space time and the fourth dimension are household words, but Flatland, with its vivid picture of one and two and three and more dimensions, was not conceived in the era of relativity.

It was written some 70 years ago when Einstein was a mere child, and the idea of space-time lay almost a quarter of a century in the future. In those far-off days, to be sure, the professional mathematicians were imagining spaces of any number of dimensions. The physicists, too, in their theorizing, were working with hypothetical graph spaces of arbitrary dimensionality. But these were matters of abstract theory. There was no public clamor for their elucidation. The public hardly knew that they existed. Isn't that sad? Isn't that sad?

In the 1800s, we were speaking about fourth dimension. We were at a level of imagination and creativity that was somehow choked out and then was forced to tap out. It's almost like there was a decision made to stop the world from creating artists or mathematicians or physicists or dreamers for that matter. One would think, therefore, that in order to write Flatland, Edwin Abbott must have been a mathematician or a physicist, but he was neither of these. True, he was a schoolmaster, a headmaster, no less, and a most distinct. one, but his field was classics, and his primary interest literature and theology on which he wrote several books. Does this sound like the sort of man who would write an absorbing mathematical

adventure? Perhaps Abbott himself thought it did not, for he published Flatland pseudonymously, as if afraid that it might be smirch, the dignity of his more formal writings of which he betrayed no reluctance to acknowledge his authorship. Much has happened to our idea of space and time since Flatland came into being. But despite all the talk of a fourth dimension, the fundamentals of dimensionality have not changed, long before the event of the theory of relativity, scientists thought of time as an extra dimension. In those days, they regarded it as a solitary, isolated dimension that kept the loof from the three dimensions of space. In relativity, time became inextricably intermingled with space to form a truly four-dimensional world,

and this four-dimensional world turned out to be a curved one. These modern developments have less significance than one might imagine for the story of Flatland. We do indeed have four dimensions, but even in relativity they are not all of the same sort. Only three are spatial. The fourth is temporal, and we are unable to move free. in time. I would say, I want to pause from it right there. I think that that may be what is changing. I think that we are becoming more aware of our ability to move freely in time and that that is perhaps the cusp of this new dimensionality that we're experiencing. Let me give you an example of what I mean. I believe it was Merseille, Elias, that talked about sacred time and and I'll go into the so sacred time have you or someone you know

or have you seen a movie all you really need to do is just think about this concept in the world of tradition be at your school or your church or something that holds sacred tradition to you could be your family there's often festivals like a lusus remember remember the illucinian mysteries or any sort of sacredly charged festival or event or rites of passage. If I could point to something that my great-grandfather did, let's say that he was a mason of some sort, and he went through this rite of passage with all his brothers. Then he passes away, and he leaves,

let's say he leaves an account specifically for me, me in an old book when I inherit his desk. And then I go through my own initiation process. And then I find that note in an old book in this desk that he gave me. And I realize it's the exact same event that he went through. Yet I never knew that he went through it. And I had already gone through it. And in his letter, he describes almost exactly the type of event. the area, the type of area in which it was held, the people that surrounded him and how he felt. And as I read what he wrote, I realized that I experienced the exact same thing. Granted, it was not the same people.

But I felt the exact same. And I was surrounded by the same type, and it was in the same type of area. Did we not experience the same event? Did we not experience the same time? I would argue that we did. I would argue that we've always had the ability to move freely through time. We've just not been able to perceive it. And it is this new perception of time

and our ability to manipulate it. You see, forever we've been, it seems to me that Since I was a child, we have been locked in time. We have been a slave to time. The alarm clock. The time clock. See, these are abstract prisons that keep us on this giant hamster wheel. Much like the second hand and the big hand and the small hand.

go around the circle clockwise. So do we spin our wheels in the hamster cage, on the hamster wheel. The wheel, the clock, the repetitive motions of history. But if we could just stop for a minute and think about sacred time, how you have experienced events that people before you, you have experienced in the same way. That means that there will be people after you that spend the exact same time the way you did and the people before you did.

You see, it's a different way of understanding time, and it allows me and you to move through time freely. And we all know that once we begin to see time in a different way, it has a radical effect on everything else. What does it mean if we can set, what does it mean if we know we've experienced something the same time that someone previously has? Does that make sense? What does it mean if we had the same time as somebody previously?

Well, that means that someone after us is going to have the same time. See, that changes our definition of time. We need no longer be locked in time. We need no longer be held prisoner by the alarm clock or the time clock. And think about the way in which the world job, the world economy is changing. It's changing because of our concept of time. Who wants to sit in traffic? I don't have time for that.

Who wants to spend all. all their time working for somebody else. I don't have time for that. What if I work from home to help out the economy, but then I have more of my time to spend with my family? You see, I'm moving through time there. I am moving through company time into personal time. And I am making more time for myself and my family

by escaping the prison that is just one form of time at once. Does that kind of make sense? I think that that is the next dimension that we're moving through. And you see, like, I got that all just from reading the introduction to Flatland. Now, granted, I've read this book several times. However, just rereading it will retune your mind. It's interesting. I feel like I'm having the same thoughts that these gentlemen were having in the 1800s,

which means I'm moving freely through time. This book is a way for these men to communicate to me. Remember, this book was written in 1884. 1884. Now, I am not a mathematician, but I could tell you that's 138 years ago. 138 years ago, 138 years ago. 138 years ago.

Okay, let's get back to the book here. If I keep rambling like this, we're going to be here all day. The fourth is temporal, and we are unable to move freely in time. We've just discussed that. We cannot return to days gone by, nor avoid the coming of tomorrow. We can neither hasten nor retard our journey into the future. We are like hapless passengers on a crowded escalator, carried relentlessly forward till our particular floor arrives, and we step off into a place where there is no time.

while the material composing our bodies continues its journey on the inexorable escalator, perhaps forever. Okay, wait a minute, Edwin, Edwin, Edwin. Wait a minute. We can neither hasten nor retard our journey into the future. Well, I agree that time keeps slipping into the future. However, what if on this crowded escalator we begin to notice patterns? What if this crowded escalator through the labyrinth is moving forever upward, but it's kind of like an MC Escher painting of this escalator that seems to move up, but in fact it doesn't move up. We begin to notice a glitch in the matrix and we see the same person standing at floor five that was standing at floor three.

And there they are at seven and then at nine and then at 11. And then all of a sudden there's just this pattern of primes. Like that is something calling to us. That is the illusion of time. That is the illusion of moving forward. That is almost the Aristotelian idea of time as the passing image of eternity. Did I get that right? I think that's what he said.

Time, the tyrant, holds sway and flesh. as in our own world. Relativity or no relativity, we still have only one dimension more than the creatures of Abbott's imagination. We still have only the three spatial dimensions to their two. The inhabitants of Flatland are sentient beings troubled by our troubles and moved by our emotions. Flat they may be physically, but their characters are well-rounded. They are our kin, our own flesh and blood. we romp with them in Flatland, and romping we suddenly find ourselves looking anew at our own humdrum world with the wide-eyed wonder of youth. In Flatland, we could escape from a two-dimensional prison by stepping momentarily into the third dimension and coming back on the other side of the prison wall. I would argue that in today's world we could escape from a three-dimensional prison by stepping momentarily into the fourth dimension and coming back on the other side of the prison wall,

which brings me, ladies and gentlemen, to Herman Melville. Moby Dick, page 220, I give you Ahab and Starbuck. But come closer, Starbuck, thou request a little lower layer. If money's to be the measure of man and the accountants have computed their great counting house and globe by grinding it with guineas one to every three parts of an inch, then let me tell thee that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here. He smites his chest, whispered stub. What's that for?

Me thinks it rings most vast but hollow. Vengeance on a dumb brute, cried Starbuck. That simply smote thee from blindest instinct? Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab seems blasphemous. Hark ye yet again, the little lower layer, all visible objects, man, are but a pasteboard mask. But in each event,

event in the living act, the undoubted deed there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask, how can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall. Shove near to me. Sometimes I think there's not beyond. But tis enough. He tasks me. He heaps me. I see in him outrageous strength with an inscrutable malice sinuing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate. And be the white whale agent or be the white whale principle. I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy man. I'd strike the son if it insulted me. For could the son do that, then could I do the other?

since there is ever a sort of fair play herein. Jealousy preceding over all creations. But not my master man is even that fair play. Who is over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye. More intolerable than fields glaring is a dultish stare. So, so thou reddest and palest,

My heat has melted thee to anger glow But look ye Starbuck What is said in heat That thing unsays itself Here's the breakdown of how that goes For Ahab his own relation To the white whale is the prime example Of man's relation to the non-human

The natural and the supernatural universe He first pictures the activity of nature As unreasoning in itself But expressive of some reasoning power Beyond the mask of natural phenomena Man's destiny is to strike through this mask or wall into the supernatural realm of reasoning power beyond. Man's destiny is to strike through this mask. Man's destiny is to strike through the mask.

That mask, ladies and gentlemen, is time. I think that that is the dimension in which we are destined to strike through. Strike through the mask, ladies and gentlemen. Strike through the mask. It's Friday. We're going to be working diligently through this book, Flatland. And who knows what kind of references I'm going to pull up when it just hits me like that.

But we got some Melville. We got some Abbott. It's Friday, ladies and gentlemen, I love you. Tomorrow we have one of the greatest interviews of all time, Dr. Bart Wilson on the property species. don't be late. It's going to be epic. We're going to have a good time. And I love every one of you. I hope you are enjoying your life. You're doing what's right. And you've got plans for the future to become better for you and your family. I hope you're thinking about ideas to make your school better,

your kids stronger, your wife happier, your husband happier. Because guess what? It comes down to us. There's a lot of people that are so fed up and tired and stressed they can't do it anymore. So that means we, ladies and gentlemen, those of us who get up an hour earlier and go to bed an hour later, those of us who have dared to call themselves dreamers, those of us who are willing to put people on your back and walk through the sand because it's the right thing to do. And I promise you, if you make that sacrifice, if you say to yourself, I'm going to be the one that does. Are you tired? Here, I'll carry you.

Get on my back. Let's go. If you're that person that's willing to help somebody else up and not expect anything in return, then your life will be great. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. But if you do what is difficult, if every day you go out there and you expect more from yourself than other people, you'll walk away the winner. Because winning and losing in life is an internal game, and it comes from telling yourself the truth.

I love you. It's Friday. Let's get up and get at them.