Mathematics will kill you
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In the infamous scene of “Π”, Aronofsky gives the protagonist a way out of pain and misery. With a drill placed firmly on his temple, Max Cohen, the schizophrenic number theorist, seeks relief from cluster headaches — one of the most painful experiences a human being can go through.
But I have a hunch the drill was Cohen’s attempt to find salvation from his obsessive pursuit of the ultimate truth. He simply wants to forget. Forget the Shem HaMephorash, the bifurcation diagram on his mirror, the countless series of numbers in the Torah. Everything. He wants peace.
Knowledge is a dangerous thing. It can twist your insides like nothing else.
I think I came very close to being a schizophrenic. They say the disease hits you in your early 20s. Out of the blue, you start hearing voices and seeing things. Now, it didn’t get to that point. I chose to simply NOT hallucinate and my mind obeyed!
There’s humor in that paragraph but I’m also glad I got out of that age bracket mentally healthy. Men need time to mature. They never tell you how dysfunctional the mind can get before the brain stabilizes, which takes roughly around 25-30 years.
Back then, I had a routine. If you can call it that. I’d wake up, brew coffee, and smoke. After a while, I’d blast loud music and work. And by work, I mean math. I wasn’t particularly good at it. It took me half a decade to realize it. The romantic in me thought I could make a grand discovery, add a pebble to the grand unified vision of Hilbert. Maybe solve Goldbach’s conjecture. You know, easy stuff!
Anyway. My linear algebra professor — she’s dead — told me that mathematics changes who you are on a fundamental level. Studying the subject changes how you function as a person. She was talking literally — I believe her now.
The effect was profound. My personality isn’t meant to touch this stuff. I’m not made for hard science, it can break me. When I was burring my nose in books, trying to fit the continuum hypothesis in my empty head, I’d see colors and shapes. My mind was going fast, too fast. It felt like I wasn’t in control. The echo of my thoughts was forming whispers, inaudible sounds, distortion. There was a pulling motion, towards the center of the psyche; sucked in by the void. Prime numbers were red and smelled like gasoline.
I still remember how awesome it was. Just sitting there, mind expanding beyond any conceptual barriers, into form and contentless. Manic euphoria would overcome me and I’d just sit there feeling enlightened. The French call it “frisson”. Usually, it happens when you listen to really good music.
It’s an addictive feeling because in my case, there was no comedown. Pure bliss. I’m very happy I wasn’t “beautiful mind”-ed.
Ignorabimus
I didn’t fit in with the rest of them. I was more philosophy, they were more algebra. They’re both the same thing, coming from different directions. But they also create a different life for you. And these people knew who and what they were about.
You could tell who was built different (is that what the cool kids say nowadays?). Their shape, their body, was twisted in a particular way reflecting their thought patterns. I witnessed a guy, frail, always pushing his glasses, get up and calculate a ridiculous differential equation in his mind. Still in awe. And jealous, mad jealous!
During my first year in uni, deluded in my abilities, I managed to get into a private study group. After two months, I was kicked out for talking shit about one of the teachers in public. But I got to meet very interesting people. One of them almost overdosed doing drugs. A woman, last time I checked, got some sort of scholarship in one of those posh English research programs. Another guy shaved his head and talked to himself most of the time.
If you want to see crazy, meet talented mathematicians. And by talented, I don’t mean good. I don’t mean number crunchers or theorem memorizers.
I mean hardcore freaks that are on the verge of losing their minds. Of course, it’s not always like that… it’s only like that when you’re actually phenomenal.
“You’re simply not good enough!”
Newton was a virgin that stuck a needle in his eye socket. Évariste Galois solved a 350 year old problem the night before he was killed in a duel — he was 20 years old. Jack Parsons, the founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the people responsible for space travel, tried to summon a demon alongside the founder of Scientology.
There are countless examples. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to find sane individuals that made a worthwhile contribution to science or the arts. There’s no give without take.
Yet, we love to omit this fact. It’s just more appealing to our fragile egos, ain’t it?
That somehow you can be a regular dude, living a regular life, and still consider yourself talented or smart. A modest, temperate life with little upheaval, the greatest vice being dessert.
Vice is sine qua non to virtue. Meaning that trouble brings bravado. Limitations beget creativity. The trait that creates chaos in your life is the same trait that can gift you greatness.
I’m not encouraging anyone to shoot heroin in order to write a book, no. I’m simply saying that there’s no such thing as a simple life if you’re somewhat ambitious beyond the material. So, if you know who you are and what you’re about, having one foot in normieland and one foot in schizoland, for lack of better terms, is dangerous. Lean into your weaknesses!
When Heracles killed his music tutor, he ran off to the mountains. There, the personifications of Virtue and Vice appeared in front of him.
”You have two choices, Glory of Hera. You can either forget your worries, your troubled mind, and choose tranquility and peace. Or, you can choose suffering. But glory awaits!”
Transgression
We’re greedy and we don’t have respect for the work. The worst combination, if you ask me. We want everything, to be everything, to do everything. If you’re genuine about it, I put respek in dat.
If you’re not, if you’re just simmering in your own romantic juices, like a character in a deranged Aesop’s fable where you can but you choose not to, then you’re just… normal! And that’s fine. Maybe accept that and move on with your life? Get a job you bum.
Speaking of romantics, they got a few things right. You can’t expect abnormal results while living a normal — is normal or “normative” the right word?—life. Your environment will simply choke whatever daemon is possessing your mind.
Oh yes, the mind! Nous, the Creator of All. This ethereal entity twisting Moirai’s spindle creates your reality, whether you like it or not. What and how you think is what and how you experience.
People who have a mind capable of great good and great evil are fucked by the system. Sorry, it’s true! The post-industrialist society, with linear progress built-in, overspecialization and maximizing profit, is a concentration camp that purifies the gayness abnormalities out of everyone. Workers are of no use if they don’t wear the same uniform.
Boom or Bust
So eventually I realized I suck at math. I don’t suck as much as you do, but hey, I’m not good enough, nor crazy enough to make an impact.
For the longest time, I pushed these ideas to the side. Childish idealism, I’d call them. I kept my head down, hypnotized by the “reasonable” grown-ups and their fulfilling lives. Square jackets, square minds. You gotta do the right thing, this or that thing, but not this!
Paradoxically, once I started working a real job, the deities of Vice and Virtue returned. And they found me sitting on a hill, contemplating if my last email had a spelling mistake.
It takes a particularly “normal” individual to work a corporate job and not realize how pointless it is. We spend at least 1/3 of the day getting told what to do, renting our minds to a gigantic, global machine of profit, learning the ins and outs of a worthless industry, only to gain “corporate-sponsored” time, aka free time, to have “hobbies”. This is really the limp dick of a fulfilling life.
By the time you retire, your identity has collapsed in the controlled demolition that is your life, in order to build another brutalist skyscraper that sells stuffed toys and AR-15s.
But, that’s a big butt, some people are meant to do this. ¡No hay problema. My issue is people who I KNOW, and deep down they know it too, are capable of so much more but they slouch and succumb under the burden of expectations in order to have “normal” experiences; ie, participate in the spectacle of the mundane.
I have no business delivering life advice, you should know that. Oh wait, no! I actually do have a business telling you what to do, a very serious business, because I’m one of the few people you’ll meet that gets you. I get you, my friend, you can now cry tears of joy!
This IS financial advice, so listen carefully:
Working a corporate job is awesome if you want to enjoy a simulated life.
Therapy is great if you want to order food over the phone without stuttering.
Finding hobbies might lead you to an interesting life before you epstein yourself.
Participating in mainstream culture is so fulfilling if you’re boring.
Playing video games and vegetating watching Netflix is akin to a spiritual feeding tube.
If you find this edgy, this post isn’t for you. Pretend you never read it, ask for your money back. Keep on doing what you’re doing, you’re doing great, cheerio!
Now, if you get it, this is your life. But I’ve seen the signs, and they don’t look good. Mathematics will kill you, music will kill you, writing will kill you. They kill stuff in you that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. They also deplete you of normality, stability, and a sense of security — for some people, the title is literal.
This is the infamous “left-hand path”, sans the esoteric woo-woo. You’re not special, many walk on it. Not by choice. By necessity!
The paradox is that your mind will create the conditions that make it a necessity. You’re already where you’re supposed to be.
Most never make it. Just look at schizo Twitter.
It’s boom or bust!
At the end of “Π”, Mx is asked to do a few calculations in his head. With a smile on his face, he says he doesn’t know. He sits down watching the wind blow the tree leaves.
This post was [Written by Human], not a robot. Make sure to share or else...
Notes
I always feel like justifying myself when I’m writing. Make sure that everyone gets something out of these posts, trying to be accommodating of the sensitivities of each individual.
But that makes for boring, sterile content. I knew that. What I didn’t know is that it also makes me a dishonest author when I succumb to this line of thinking.
Honesty is a skill. It’s cutting the fat out of the conditioned and conditional persona. You need to practice often, sharpen your knives daily. Or you’ll get clogged arteries suffocating your heart.
So, while “Mathematics will kill you” was supposed to be a journal of my experiences in university, it quickly terraformed into something bigger. Maybe a revelation, I don’t know. What I do know is that I have to be honest, not perfect. I don’t even have to be right as long as I’m being truthful.
Anyway. That’s enough self-awareness for today, don’t you think?
'Prime numbers were red and smelled like gasoline' - what a line.