Gœdellian Usurpations

August 12, 1998
(last edited on April 30, 2006)

And I look up to take in the world,
A small pocket of it,
Embarking on the journey of committing memory to word
Before the memory
And the word
Fades.

Communion was so desperately needed,
And the universe has a way of providing
What is needed, but only when it is truly needed—
Or perhaps, and almost certainly,
All things are of the universe,
And one must find what is needed in what is provided.

Ultimately, all differences of thought
That are of importance
Can be broken down into matters of questions
Versus matters of answers.

East and West can be shown side by side,
But the comparison is flawed;
The assumptions of East or West invalidate the exposition.
The answers are given,
And nothing exists of the question.

To tradition, left and right are different.
Opposites.
A red light is different from a yellow,
And a green.
There are opposing sides of a battle,
In which there are winners and losers.

To the recesses of my mind,
Right and left are the same,
But right is different from yellow.
And when the battle begins,
There are no winners,
And all involved have already lost—
They fight to lose less.

What is right and left,
What is green and yellow?

In war, it is advantageous to gain the higher ground.
This was especially true in the past,
And is especially true today.
And why?
On the lower ground, one is caught
In the frenzy and raw emotion and involvement,
Struggling in blind rage for survival.
From higher ground,
A cosmic being looking at ants,
One can see the patterns that emerge in the chaos,
And can observe the tides of history.

Free from emotional attachment,
Observing from above,
One can see the motion of a single molecule
In a stream of flowing water.
Though it flows chaotically, heading in its own direction,
The overall flow of the body
Follows its course, observable only
From outside the system.

And so what is green and yellow,
And right and left?

It is time for something different than the powers and the principalities,
Time to create something new to embark
On the constant journey of recreating itself,
Until humanity once again needs something new.

What is one faced with at the fork in the road?

The alternatives are automatic,
Right or left.

What are these alternatives?

They are right or left, they are the choices.

And what are they, as choices?

I don’t understand, they are the available options.

You are making it too complex; basically, what are they?—The fork in the road is forcing the issue, posing the need for a choice.

They are—resolutions?

Perhaps they can be, but that is more complex than it needs to be—simply, what are they?

They are replies?

And what are they replying to? What needs a reply? And what is a reply, a choice?

I don’t know—replies, resolutions…

Keep the first three letters.

Responses?

Yes! And what is it a response to?

To the fork.

Too complex still; what is the response to in terms of the situation?

To the situation, maybe to the resolution?

It can be, but that is another line. Again, think more simply. What is a response?

I’m not sure I follow, I only said “response” because you told me to keep the first three letters of “resolution.”

When someone… poses something that needs a response, what is it? What is it they are doing?

They are asking?

And when someone asks, what is the reply?

A response? An answer.

The matter is of questions, and of answers,
And understanding them,
And recognizing that the right questions must be asked,
That forming the question is important.

Right is an answer, left is an answer;
Yellow and green is an answer.
But which direction, right and left being the choices,
Is a question,
While red, green, and yellow
Is a different question from right and left.

In tradition, the answers are given,
And this practice is confused for teaching.
The emphasis is not on learning how to ask the question correctly.
There is no word in English to say,
“The question is not answerable in its current form.”
In English, there is only yes or no.

The beginning comes not with a fully-answered solution,
But rather by asking the right question—
Not by engaging in the game by the game’s rules,
Not by creating new factions to represent new ideals,
But rather by not playing,
By gaining the higher ground,
By acting anew,
By asking the right question.

How are you doing?

I am, indeed, doing.

Let me try again; are you doing well?

I am doing, and I am doing so well—
it would be difficult for me not to be doing well,
because if I wasn’t,
I wouldn’t really be doing,
And then the question would be meaningless.
I’m not sure I understand that question,
It is rather strange.

So how was your summer?

It was experiential.

Is that good? Bad?

Ah, I hate labels like that—it’s so hard to answer.

Hmm, that’s the thing about him,
you have to ask the right question
to get the right answer.

That’s what I love about mathematics,
What is so beautiful.
If the question is asked correctly,
It is equal to the answer.