Infinite and pick up lines

In my opinion, it's true what they say that there is nothing sexier than a girl who understands infinite. A friend of mine sent me the following line, mentioning it was funny and something I should consider using: "you must be the square root of 2 because I feel irrational when I'm around you." That's pretty funny, so I figured you could top it by saying, "you must be pi because i want to be next to you forever" or something like that. The key to the second one is she has to be smart enough to realize I'm not talking about pie the food, but pi the number. I'm not saying let's be an apple crisp forever, that's just stupid and those aren't infinite. I'm a dork, what do you want from me.

So I was sort of giggling about these things during my commute the other day and I just started listing all the interesting things I could think of about infinite. For something that's so big, I really didn't have much but I did remember a comment I read in a story once by, I think, Borges: All animals are immortal except man, because they do not understand death. That's not exact, but it's the general idea. Anyway, I was looking for that quote in my book then online, and I found another one: There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite. This one is, according to this website, from The Avatars of the Tortoise, which I haven't read. But it's an interesting quote nonetheless.

Anyway, those are asides and not really where I was going with this, although I think an intelligent analysis of Borges comments on the infinite would be interesting. I was thinking about what other analogies or images we have of infinite. The first quote above basically says if you don't know death, you are immortal. That's very interesting, especially if you want to look into why so many cultures throughout time have had some type of religion and particularly a concept of some part of you living on in another world. Perhaps in our very nature is some desire to be connected to the infinite, and we develop that in our culture as religion. That's a complicated topic that I'm not going to get into here, but maybe another time. However, I will pose the following for you to think about, because I find it interesting. Religion, it could be argued, is some sort of ongoing collective cultural agreement so we can believe our lives will get better, even if it is another world. Let's steal from Marx so I sound smart and call this the Opium of the People argument. However, could it not also be argued that more intrinsically our brains are wired not to accept the temporal nature of our lives, and therefore cling to some connection the underlying universe which is infinite? In this argument, we all feel disconnected from each other, the world, the universe, eveything because we realize, at some, in a relatively near future, we will not be connected to it physically. We are temporal, but the energy around is not. Sure our bodies decompose into the earth and become beautiful roses or something, but that's not us, that's not our mind. Ultimately, most people do not accept that as sufficient. Is our mind seeking that connection through religion? That argument is different than the argument for a better life, it is seeking an eternal life. Those are, without doubt and without wandering to far off my path, not the same thing. I won't go into it. Like the famouse mathematician who said, I have a proof but it's too complicated for the margin so just take my word for it. In his case, we still believe his theory but we haven't actually proved it. Wish I could remember who that was, it's an intersting problem.

Babble babble babble. That's what that little aside was, pure babble babble. What I wanted to figure out, what i was thinking about that day in the car was this: what are the symbols of the infinite? Obviously, the mathematical sideways 8 is one. I think the apple is one, at least in judea-christian societies because it is the first fruit in the bible and, if you know your bible, is why we don't live forever and have knowledge, therefore, life sucks. That's the point of the bible by the way if you are to busy to read it. We ate of the tree of knowledge, we understood a few things, and now life sucks, but the new testament says we should try to be good anyway so we can get into heaven and have eternal life. Interesting. That's about it for that book. Anyway, I think the apple fits tightly into the christian concept of eternal life (because we were evicted from Eden we know life and will die, but can gain eternal life... without the apple, no death and no need for christianity. it might be interesting to note that without Judas, no crucifixion and no Jesus as saviour. they stole the same basic plot line 2 times in the same book in the same religion! and nobody cares. i can't be a christian just because of that).

Anyway, I think I have stated before the tomato is untrustworthy member of the fruit and veggie family (is it a fruit? is it a vegetable? Tomatos cannot, and I cannot state this clearly enough, be trusted with secrets!), but the infinite? I go with apple from the fruit family, without any option B. Other symbols include the ocean, the universe, death works, but then I couldn't think of anything. Star crossed lovers popped into my head, some sort of love that lasts forever, beyond death but I don't think that really works. That is a very short and depressing list for such an important issue. Thinkers, where are you?

There must be others, the concept of infinite should pass through everything we do. Hmm, I'll have to think about it again and let you know what I come up.