Top level communication: Quest detours

On Aug 11, 2007, at 8:09 AM, jon dieks wrote:

oh nothing . net how do i thank you it has been many ,many month's since our last e-mail. i wanted to thank you for your encourgement in my quest for nothingness, and as in our last corispodance you told me my journey to nothing has begun. i wondered what you meant about taking nothing seriously and ponderd enormously about it , and then all these signs started pointing my in directions, leading me nowhere, and then i found it! my golden apple, and am now a proud poee of discordia! and now all things make sense and nothing makes sense. in a way nothing did before. so i just wanted to thank you (actually the goddess eris commanded it of me) and as a acting poee of discordianism a declare you



























!! (and remember "to eris human"

To which I replied:

Hi Jon,

Thank you for your further comments on a topic that means nothing more to me than it does to you. As for my words of uncouragement, I need clarify my statement before I go any further. I am pretty sure that what I said was, "Your infinite journey has begun." I admire your eagerness, but I have to express that in my arrogant opinion, a few months is a very short turnaround on an infinite journey. In fact, it seems that your journey has ended (give or take) about an eternity too soon.

I already know what you're thinking, so I'll just say it, "Infinity loops back on itself, ergo any exit point on my journey could be considered as the end of an infinite cycle." First, I must applaud you for thinking of such a brilliant wrong argument. If time were circular, that argument would have some merit. With so much talk about space-time we may sometimes forget that time has no spacial properties. Time is something that is measured by its arrival and/or passing. Or to look at it another way, the function a clock performs is keeping track of time. If a clock stops, we do not conclude that time has stopped, or that our work on this planet is done. We simply replace the clock.

I submit that you have been following broken signs leading you to a big bad apple. I think that you simply started in the wrong figurative direction, by pondering enormously about it. (By your use of the word "it" I'm assuming you mean the infinite journey.) You may have done better by thinking about it "at length". Although at first glance, "at length" may seem to be attributing spacial qualities to time, it is merely a way of expressing that one has taken his course through time dealing with or pondering on the matter at hand. Even if we were to view time as a chart we would see a linear progression in this case rather than a circle or a lazy 8.

You also call yourself a POEE of the goddess Eris. By POEE, I can only assume that you mean Powertrain Operations & Engine Engineer. What I'm wondering is what sort of operation is Eris running over there? I knew that the American Auto industry was in the proverbial poo bucket, but now this is all beginning to make sense. Personally, I wouldn't put someone with her track record at the helm of a sinking ship.

I have a tip for you, don't listen to commands from an apple tossin' banshee. It tends to cause trouble, and as we all know, trouble isn't nothing.

I wish you well on your CONTINUING journey. As for your e-mail, great use of negative space and a wickedly bad pun, really, really bad. Freud has been referenced many times as saying that the pun is the lowest form of wit. But Freud would have said anything to get a peek inside the pants of your mind. If indeed Freud did say this, he could have at least delivered it as a pun. Low is almost nothing.

Thank you for your continued interest in nothing.

--Xymyl