Scarriet

World events are happening so fast these days, Scarriet, the beloved literary site relaxing by a lazy river somewhere, hardly dares to comment on them.

But since things are happening so fast, we wish to comment on them.

Oh helpless paradox.

Add to this dilemma, the fact that, while Scarriet wishes to comment on the world, Scarriet knows almost nothing of the world.

Well, here goes:

I asked this simple question to a political activist acquaintance from India who was raising the alarm on the current actions of the White House abroad.

“But don’t you think Venezuela and Iran are already captured nations?”

Breathlessly, I continued:

“They both are run by criminals. Criminal nations, by necessity, export (and import) criminality.

The United States, under certain of its regimes, exports criminality, as well. I’m not saying the United States is perfect—far from it.

We must treat every situation as unique, or no politics can be cogent or clear.

I agree sovereignty should be respected, (does the EU respect sovereignty?) but that principle must finally be curious as to the freedom and sanctity of a nation’s citizenry.

The current administration in the United States is fighting a long history of corruption and anti-democratic (deep state) entrenchment. Sometimes it is really that simple: moral builders vs. thieves.

Any political observer captured by entities such as the BBC, the EU (and its net zero insanity) and the mainstream “politics as usual” of the United States and its legacy media, will be compromised. Any person from India who doesn’t understand that London is still a snake (as much today as it was when London’s queen ruled India) will never understand politics.

Iran’s fall in 1979 hinged on the fact that Britain’s oil license in Iran expired in 1979 and Iran’s capture was deliberately fostered by the very same elements in the United States bent on destroying the current administration.”

I want the readers of Scarriet to understand. Scarriet is free. It is not compromised—by academia, by fear, by nonsense, by anything.

Scarriet understands poetry alone is not enough, but this is not the same as denying poetry is truth. Poetry is truth.

Poetry is better viewed as what it truly is when put next to mathematics, as Poe does in his “Eureka.”

The following (a glimpse of another of my text conversations, this time to family members) may help:

“I spent this afternoon re-reading the middle part of Eureka, more impressed than ever (if that is possible) by Poe’s 1848 essay. One needs to read this work very slowly (there is nothing else like it). There are sentences in Eureka which need to be contemplated for a week, a month.

For a moment I was actually entertaining the idea that Poe was the secret second coming of Christ. The truth of Eureka is that profound. It is SCIENCE—but music (poetry), too.

EMPHASIS is important. This is the one qualifying aspect of art which identifies it—EMPHASIS. [This alone is what makes Eureka a poem.]

Poe describes the miraculous mutuality of gravity.  The poet intentionally does so in such a manner that the reader comprehends the importance of the universality of gravity. Poe needs this fact in order to describe the origin of the universe. It is the only universality for Poe. It proves, for Poe, the indivisible One which precedes the Big Bang. Attraction (universal gravitation) and Diffusion (repulsion, electricity, light, irradiation) are Poe’s two opposite principles. [Poe says matter is repulsion.]

Einstein’s E = MC2 is all but stated by Eureka. [Einstein read Eureka] Poe also intuits the particle/wave paradox of light by calling light “particles” and then adds “impressions, if you wish” as Poe demonstrates the “distance squared” law of irradiation. 

Also, re: Gödel proving nothing can be proved or demonstrated—Poe explicitly says this very thing in Eureka!!

Poe was famous enough that a large number of people were given the opportunity to read Eureka—the Bible of the Second Coming, if you will.

Quite different from the Bible, yes.

Eureka is the scientific factual equivalent. [Subtly sprinkled with theology]

If everyone on earth were to understand Eureka, humankind would all become scientists and there would be peace on earth.

But in a kind a divine and miraculous irony no one understands Eureka.

Perhaps only I do. I know of no one who truly understands it; all the commentary I have read either dismisses it, or downplays it.

Perhaps I exaggerate, but Eureka has nowhere near the popularity of the bible—which generates an infinite amount of debate and even hatred, compared to the obscurity of Eureka—which I consider to be a divine work.

After all, the God of the Bible deemed it proper to wipe out the human race in “the famous flood,” an indication He was not a little peeved at the thickness and ignorance of humankind.

The circumstances of Eureka are symbolically parallel, proving how ignorant the human race is, since no human being is receptive to its divine insights, which are there, if one looks—in my humble opinion.

In Eureka, Poe self-consciously reflects on how he will be called mad for what he is trying to articulate. But READ it, carefully. Then you will KNOW.

If you choose NOT to know, that’s fine, too, of course.”

You may have noticed that I’m far away from Venezuela and Iran.

I will now quote myself in a textual conversation with family members, same time period (near-present).

It is a glimpse of me torturing myself over mathematics—a subject which I never understood. The specific topic happens to be the mystery of what a mathematical “mean” is, as it relates to the “Gauss counting puzzle.”

We can’t know poetry unless we know mathematics.

We will never understand Venezuela, Iran, or mathematics, without poetry.

The “lazy river” of Scarriet is alive.

Here is the final conversation:

“I should thank [Uncle] Bill for posting the [standard, textbook] info on the ‘mean.’ 

Let me clarify why I am prolix.

‘The mean,’ to me, is the ‘middle of the counting.’

Example. The ‘mean’ of 1 thru 3 is 2. As one counts from 1 to 3, the ‘middle of that counting’ is 2. It also works for 1 thru 5. As one travels from Kamchakta (1) to Afghanistan (5), one notices the mean, or the middle, is Ural (3). There are an equal number of territories (2) on either side of Ural (the Mean) as I destroy Ian, Aaron, Dave, or Jenny, on my journey, my march, my conquest, with the yellow pieces.

[I reference the game ‘Risk,’ since we play that game during family reunions.] 

However, if I travel from 1 to 100, the ‘mean,’ I am informed by the mathematicians, is 55. 

Immediately I am struck by an inconsistency. 55 is clearly not in the middle of 1 to 100. 50 is. 

The fact that a mathematical process or operation which involves simple counting is not consistent shakes me to the very core. If this is not consistent, what is? How can such a simple process, visible to my eye, undergo a fundamental alteration of principle? 

Shouldn’t something as simple as “one, two, three” remain in place for the journey 1 thru 100? 

What if the ‘counting amount’ were a container and the ‘mean’ the amount of gas in that container? For a container of 3, the “mean” (2) is 66.6% —the container is two/thirds filled with gas. But if the ‘container and its gas’ is simply increased to 100 from 3, now the gas in our tank has shrunk to 55%.  

How is this possible? The relation of gas to tank did not change. The ‘mean’ is still the ‘middle of counting,’ whether we count to 3 or 100. But we lost gas. 

But what’s worse, is that “the math” lost the gas. 

We didn’t lose the gas. The math did. 

The mathematicians will run to their formulas and make everything all right. 

The math will fix the math. 

But the poet is not satisfied. The poet feels betrayed. The poet will never quite trust math, again. 

Socrates, and later Poe (see Dupin), famously proclaimed that the true philosopher is both mathematician and poet. 

Imagination (see Eureka) is necessary to discover the scientific secrets of the universe—even though the mathematicians are likely to hang the person who is too imaginative. 

There is a method to my madness.”  

Venezuela!

Iran!

I had to say something.

Now I feel better.