There was a time when I hated algebra. Not because it is difficult, which it most certainly is for me. I hated algebra because the concepts presented had no attachment for me in the world in which I live. The first time someone asked me to define, “X” I was tempted to tell him that it was the letter after W in the English alphabet. As my resistance lessened through comprehension, I came to enjoy solving inequalities and equations. As an avid gamer, who adjusts the difficulty of all games which I play to the highest possible setting, overcoming the challenges presented by the most basic aspects of algebra was exhilarating for me. All of this changed the first time my professor uttered the words, “imaginary numbers.” I had just started to value and respect algebra as the language of reality, the vowels of the universe, and the mere notion that I was to waste my time masturbating with numbers that had earned a phrase so alien to anywhere academic, save for a kindergarten classroom was appalling. The remainder of that semester along with the following one left me feeling like a dog being taught to jump through flaming hoops, the difference being that a hoop-jumping dog actually gets to work with real tangible things, unlike imaginary numbers.
Recently, I enrolled in a summer semester algebra class. This was the first and last algebra class that would transfer to a four year college and actually have a significant impact on my future as a student. I was daunted; I knew my attitude towards algebra was less than conducive to my success in learning much. Fortunately, I was blessed with a professor who speaks algebra as well as English, and has the ability to translate the more abstract concepts of algebra in a way that I can not only comprehend them but also see their value to the standard of living to which I am accustomed to. One of the first topics he tackled was that of imaginary numbers.
“Who cares about imaginary numbers?” He said with a Cheshire grin.
He went on to explain how many of the modern technologies we enjoy would not be possible without them. From space travel to architectural stability projections, life would not be what it is today without imaginary numbers. This revelation brought me to a place where I can not only enjoy the time I spend in class and out, working on algebra, but also removed the negative barrier I had erected out of ignorance.
In the second week of the course we have started exploring the world of graphing. As my professor began describing the formula for finding the length of a right triangle, he was reminded of a mathematician by the name of Fermat. Fermat was a prominent mathematician in the 17th century, who asked a question to which no answer was found for more than 350 years. One of Fermat’s final acts was a proclamation; he had scribbled in the margin of a book he was reading that he had solved the question but lacked sufficient room in the margin to detail it. Fermat died before recording the solution. The quest to solve the problem spanned hundreds of years and thousands of attempts, monetary awards were given for merely progressing the problem by a few solutions, but no formula was discovered to absolutely solve the problem for a very long time and it was achieved with the help of a computer’s processing power.
I was ready to be thrilled by the impact that the solving of the problem had on our understanding of science and the universe. Instead, my professor said that he felt that the use of a computer was a form of cheating, thereby lessening the significance of the solution; that some guy and his computer, “all fat and happy” had deprived humanity of some great achievement by using a computer to solve this problem which had stumped some of the greatest minds that the area of algebra had to offer for centuries.
It is exactly this kind of thinking which has caused plateau of our progression on a scientific, political, and social level. It is these backwards fossils who refuse to retire, step down, and let a younger and fresher generation who is not afraid of using the tools which our elders provided for us, to create a better tomorrow for ourselves and our children. It is not like someone walked into a clearing and picked the first computer off of a tree and carefully cultivated it to produce better models. The computer is one of the few permanent tangible representations of the technical progress of the past fifty years and the margin by which it out preforms itself on an annual basis is breathtaking to say the least.
This line of thought is evident in our political system as well. All of the rallying cries to revere the constitution as some sort of holy script, never to be deviated from, are the drowning calls of old white men who are afraid of a world which is rapidly growing too fast for them to adjust to, that or people who lack the insight to comprehend that the constitution is a living document, written by a collaboration of men with an enormous foresight, but not omnipotence. They did however have the wisdom to speak against the forming of a two party system; George Washington was against the idea of dividing the republic, presumably because the kind of stalemate that we currently see in D.C. is inevitable under these conditions.
John Addams once said, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
Let’s forget that some of the same people whom we revere as great leaders and minds told us in no uncertain terms that the way in which we are running things is flawed and inevitably will lead to our downfall. Let’s just examine a document that is several hundred years old with a modern eye so we can justify screwing over the majority of the masses so that our elected officials can play at governing our nation, and when it all goes to shit and we go in to the red, we can just say “oopsie doodles” and raise the debt cap while taxing the poor some more. The majority of which are poor because these fossils won’t take their abacuses off somewhere and retire.
