Freedom, Stewardship, and Creative Powers via Mathematical Flashback

Today's pondering of freedom, stewardship, and creative powers has lead me through an interesting recollection and mental exploration of the concepts of continuity, differentiability, elastic and inelastic spiritual collisions, and behavior at infinity. Unfortunately (or fortunately), my fingers do not type as fast as these ideas raced through my head, but I will at least attempt to get some of my out there thoughts out there for the fortunate reader.

During my undergraduate years, I took a math class, Introduction to Number Theory, which completely fascinated me. Numbers, after all, are merely abstract ideas used to represent the world in which we live, and our experiences in it, in an organized manner, allowing us to gain insights and make discoveries about our world. One of the topics covered in my introductory Number Theory course that I found particularly poignant, and spiritually enlightening, was the concept of behavior at infinity of different sequences of numbers, and in particular, how these sequences behaved in relation to each other as they approached infinity.

Take, for instance, the two sequences A(n)=n, and B(n)=2n. No matter how big n gets, B will always be twice as big as A, which itself is going to get very large as n approaches infinity. On the other hand C(n)=n-1 will only ever be 1 unit away from A, which, as n gets larger, becomes a completely insignificant difference. One might say that C is practically the same thing thing as A as n approaches infinity. While the limitations of this text editor (or possibly of my knowledge of it) prevent me from displaying such, there are other sequences, the ratio of which gets exponentially larger and larger as n approaches infinity. So, there appear to be three options for monotonic sequences of numbers: either (1) they are practically the same thing in the eternities (because their rates of change are equal, and therefore the difference between them becomes minuscule over time), (2) one stays a certain number of times larger than the other, no matter how large they both get, or (3) the ratio of their "sizes" becomes unboundedly larger (or smaller) over time.

For all of you non-mathematically-minded people out there, stay with me. I am going somewhere with this. The practical application of this concept of behavior at infinity that I've been thinking about this morning is the possibility of different options for the relationship between production and consumption (or asset/liability) trends of an individual, a family, or a society. I've come to the conclusion that an important step toward godhood and maximizing creative powers (and liberty) is to learn how to place my production-consumption ratio in the third category, so that it becomes unboundedly large as time tends toward infinity. That would definitely lend toward perpetuating the creation of worlds without end, and the ability to do this seems to be a characteristic of God.

This leads to an appropriate discussion of continuity and differentiability (I apologize for any flashbacks the mention of these two words may have caused of the nightmares you experienced while studying for your calculus final in college, but hopefully these nightmares have been replaced by now with an overwhelming gratitude for the usefulness of calculus - if not, maybe you didn't really 'get it' and should take the course again!) - how changes in production-consumption ratio occur, and the feasibility or likelihood of such a change. However, being hungry, hair wet, and having presents yet to wrap, I'll save that discussion for another day!

Choose Something Like a Star

Choose Something Like a Star
by Robert Frost - 1947


O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.


Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.



It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.



Truth is an ever-fixed mark, one that does not sway with the tide of trends of the day, or with opinions of people. And while truth can at times be difficult to decipher, I find it a great comfort to know that my target isn't moving.


This principle could easily be applied to politics, but I am thinking this morning of how it applies to relationships. Two people with separate bearings on an unmoving star will find that, not only will they stay together, unified, but will arrive together at a destination pleasing to both. I have, in the past, (as I'm sure many before me have done, and will yet do,) set my bearings on the person with whom I was in a relationship, too easily swayed away from truth. With this thought, the picture comes to mind of two life-jacket-clad people without a boat clinging to each other in the water. Sure they have each other, but where are they going, and how could they possibly get there?

Religion, Government, Politics, and Philosophy

This blog is dedicated to the Cause of Liberty, to the preservation of the God-given, inalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. As Thomas Jefferson so wisely articulated, we were endowed with these rights by our Creator, and governments are instituted among men for the sole purpose of securing these rights. Therefore, I would find it impossible to do the subject of liberty justice without mingling religion and government. In my opinion, anyone who tries to separate the two and discuss the one at the exclusion of the other, or vice versa, is only telling half of the story.

So, please don't be suprised to find a mixture of religion, government, politics, and philosophy decking the pages of this blog.