From TRIAL BY TERROR by Hartt and Judene Wixom
DAVID YOUNG'S PHILOSOPHY
The following statement is David Young's philisophy distributed to
Cokeville students and teachers the afternoon of May 16th. Similar
copies were mailed to the press and to President Ronald Reagan. It is
reproduced here exactly as written by Young himself although his pape
allowed only a 3/8 inch left margin and ran off the page on the right
side. His infinity symbols were hand drawn.
Zero equals Infinity
Seemingly, some thousands of years ago, several individuals combined,
or perceived their combination and therein created Man.
This creation was, and is, a concept; a thought or idea, neither right
or wrong (left) but a way among ways.
For the better part of the interim then, men played with Man making
love, fire, food, mores, children, Gods, language, tools, wastes, etc:
combinations of divers sorts, in almost as many directions (purposes).
Now people come and people go, but always as people, no longer as
individuals from which people had risen (or succumb). Almost as
frequently as people come and go, additional, more distant concepts
(from whatever reality is the individual/that precedes them); families,
clans, tribes, villages, towns, cities, states, and civilizations make
their brief passages and then leave the scene.
These various combinations of Man with teir various concepts of
themselves invented war in order that any singular combination might
achieve dominance over other combinations. This came to pass as Man
attempts to preempt those rights of the individual. The individual
remembers reality only in learned (rather than the original and innate,
therefore false) responses to right (his combinations values) and wrong
(other combinations values differing from his own.)
History is the study of these combinations.
As a matter of record, therefore, some 2400+ years ago, Socrates, and
individual, addressed himself to an evolving concept called knowledge.
Knowledge is again a way to conceive, but conception is enlarged through
rules less combination specific. Philosophy, remote as ever, is slowly
displaced by science (mathematics, medicine, astronomy, etc.), a
disciplines observing the singular rule that a fact becomes knowledge
when it can be proved.
Proof is a concept, it suggests something that "is" on account of
itself - it "is" proven. At best a probability, at worse nonsense,
proof in any event is very distant from reality. Nevertheless it has
been the predominant concept these 2000+ years and any combination that
has competed with other combinations using it has eventually either
adopted it or ceased to exist.
Be this as it may, knowledge and its attendant proofs remain but a way
among ways. Socrates, reputed to be the wisest man of his time,
investigated the basis of knowledge in a manner still available (Plato
wrote it down and it survives), still as viable, and still as conclusive
as it was 2400+ years ago. Socrates concluded, just as we must, "As for
me, all I know is that I know nothing."
Nothing? This knowledge of 'nothing' then is all we have for all the
lessons of history, these 2400+ years, Christ, revolutions, insurance,
relativity, moon and space probes, cruesades and inquisitions,
Shakespeare, Newton, medical science, hydrogen, fusion, metalurgy,
Hitler, electricity, government and law, etc.?
The answer to this concern regarding the nothingness of knowledge is
rather yes and no. The Knowledge of Nothing is all there is (to know),
but 99.9% of us don't even know that. Mostly, as in all these several
thousands of years, we believe (another concept!) we know that 2 plus 2
equals 4 or that a line perpendicular from the ground is up, or that
Christ is good (bad or indifferent), or that our names or ages are such
and such.
That our belief that the moon is something we can put men on, or that a
certain creed offers a unique conclusion, or that E+MC@ is not one whit
more true than a New Guinean tribes concepts and rationales that have
preserved its stone age culture into our world, leave the majority of us
feeling wronged. Therefore, rather than learn the reality and
limitations of knowledge, we refute truth with some age old axiom
(bullets conquer stone axes), note the bobbing heads of surrounding
bigots (99.9% of everyone) and return without doubt or question to
selfish, self-centered, egotistical sub systems and social specific
cultures fromwhich we otherwise might free ourselves.
Were we to continue, however, the invextigation of knowledge, we'd need
to internalize Socrates'; All I know is that I know nothing.
0=[infinity], Zero (or Nothing) Equals the Infinite. TRUTH!
How is this to be? Believing 2 plus 2 equals 4 hardly invalidates
Knowing 0=[infinity]. The diabolical trick we've otherwise learned
(internalizesd) is realitivity; when in Rome do as the Romans, when
doing math do as the mathematicians, when fighting a thermonuclear war,
discard spears and arrows for the thermonuclear devises, etc.
While 2 plus 2 equals 4 (and there would have been no men put on the
moon if it hadn't) it might just as well equal 22 or many ('primitive'
tribes frequently respond thus to any mathematical concept above 3) or
various other concepts that are easier to ignore than to realize, know,
and internalize. But would we internalize these various concepts, we
realize the relativeness of these various formulas, that knowledge is
indeed relative, therefore untrue, therefore unknowledge, certainly
nothing less than falsehood.
That0=[infinity] is TRUE, REALITY, and a symbolic manner of prphrasing
Socrates' conclusion regarding the limits of knowledg is another
matter. Here we confront what we thought we pursued all these years,
what we should have remembered from 2400 years ago. The imortal Greek
told us, showed us, and taught us the limitations of knowledge and we
killd him for it, not merely one individual once, but in all this
nonsense we've engaged in since. Still, in 2400 years, 24,000 years, or
240,000 eons, there is truth-relativity and TRUTH. Let's cease being
beasts and begin to be Gods!
As was suggested at the beginning of this writting, Man is an
invention, he is lots of individuals. Rather or not individuals
ultimately exist (and what we mean by asking that question) is matter
for another writting, it will presently suffice to remember that we
still singularly (individually) conceive and perceive in the
ever-present. Aware of the relativity of the games we play in our
various existances, we will allow our individual trajectories (precepts
and concepts) their original and innate freedom to achieve their own
accords (determine their own natures ) without the hindrances of Man,
families, clans, villages, towns, cities, states, or civilizations.
Responsible, as ever (we die our own death, remember?) for our own
actions (no Man, family clan, village, town, city, state, government, or
religion condoning withholding the above noted original and innate
freedoms) we will collectively evolve into the next step of wherever it
is we're going (Nowhere in the REALITY of 0-[infinity] but still a long
way from achieving it.).
We are all ONE and 'we' came apart to do 'this' for something 'to do'
in Nothing and Infinity."
David G. Young
4/th Wct. 1978
Tucson, Arizona
Original file name: ZERO EQUALS INFINITY
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