Purpose, Calculus, and the “Why” of Life

“As you will find in multivariable calculus, there are often a number of solutions for any given problem.” – A Beautiful Mind

When you take a calculus test, make sure you don’t sit between identical twins – you’ll never be able to differentiate between them.

Often as I go through my daily life, I have to step back and ask the question, “Why?”

“Why” is a really important question, but Sir Isaac Newton was focused in his science on “What”.

Newton figured out (to the best of available information and measurements possible at the time) a very large amount of the “What”.  His equations of motion and gravity are really, really accurate, right up until the point where very large speeds (think how quickly illegals pass over our “border”) or very large masses (think your mother) change the game.  Newton’s rules allow us to predict the orbits of most of the planets with precision.

This is all based on based on 1690’s tech, which your mother would have been familiar with.

He also designed a second Pink Floyd album cover that day, after he set his roommate on fire.

Gottfried Leibniz, though, was really focused on the “Why” question even though he and Newton discovered calculus about the same time.

For Newton, the “Why” was a given.  Newton spent more time in study of the Bible than he did in study of nature or of economics (Newton was the Grand Baron of the Mint, or some such, and was really in favor of executing counterfeiters and people who clipped coins.

Like I always say, for every problem there is a very simple solution.

Leibniz wanted to go further and understand why gravity existed.  Ultimately, that was a question that he couldn’t solve with the measurements available at that time, and we still really don’t have a good idea for the “why” of many basic features of the reality that allows us to make and enjoy PEZ™, watch movies, or sit in a hot tub.

Yeah, things like “time”, “inertia”, “why everyone likes Italian food”, and “why we are even here in the first place”.  Those are things that are, so far, beyond the ability of physics and science in general to explain.

And that’s okay.

What kind of chicken did Leibniz order?  He always Gottfried.

When I look at my own life, I often wonder “why” about a ton of different issues.  I really believe that I’m fortunate in many ways that I really can’t understand the “why” of.  I remember when teachers would tell me that my kids were smart, well, I’d feel proud.

Now?  I realize that I had (almost) no impact on that, at all.  They were born with it – as Rush Limbaugh (PBUH) used to note that he had “talent on loan from God.”  When I first heard that, I thought it was braggadocio, but then realized that Rush was acknowledging that his way with words and skill at communicating, even his sense of humor were nothing for him to be personally proud of – they were on loan from God.

I get it now.

The events of our lives are like that, too.  Some are random, and some have a deeper meaning that either is immediately apparent or is apparent at some future point in time.  The random ones are just that, random.  It doesn’t generally matter (much) if a leaf falls on the east side or the west side of my house – I can ignore them perfectly well on either side.  It’s meaningless.

When a BMW® owner learns to drive, what car do they generally switch to?

But I’ve observed that little delays in my life, the “where did I put my keys” moments that slow me up getting out the door have several times saved me from getting into accidents.  A small thing?

Certainly.  But there are bigger ones that happen, too, things that are so unlikely to happen that they are effectively miracles – those have occurred far too frequently in my life for me to ignore.  Yes, once you’ve lived through 10,000 or more days, 5,000 or more commutes, some unlikely stuff is going to happen.

But we all know the bigger coincidences when we see them – the events that occurred in our lives that, looking backward, were either omens or led to situations we never expected.

This leads, ultimately, to a contradiction in my life there is John Wilder who:

  • Tries to prepare all of the important things so that everything is covered, and tries to live a virtuous and Godly life,

And,

  • Sees the outcome of the planning slowing turning into a colossal mess and the attempts at being virtuous leading to negative personal outcomes and says, “Meh, whatever.”

It’s true – virtue and grace don’t guarantee economic success – soulless creatures like George Soros prowl the world like a Lovecraftian Monster, using their money to spread chaos and disrupt cultural traditions dating back thousands of years.  And he’s rich.  If Soros has even a single positive virtue, I have yet to hear of it.

Kamala got chosen as VEEP for her race and gender instead of for providing sexual favors – which might make it the proudest moment of her life.

There is a scene from that great classic of cinema, BASEketball, where the main character (Joe Cooper) has reached rock bottom, he’s been abandoned by his childhood friend, his girlfriend is filled with contempt for him and he’s being publicly vilified.

His boyhood friend, however, has gotten everything:   public acclaim, money, and gets into a hot tub with a Playboy® playmate (they used to be girls).

Spoiler:  Joe Cooper sticks to the path of virtue, and in the end, everything is returned to him.

That’s the way that, as humans, we want to see life work out, so the good guys win.

What happened to the Russian who told a joke about Stalin?  I don’t know, either.

But it doesn’t always do that, and that’s okay – Soros will be rich until he leaves that money (along with control of dozens of Evil Foundations) to his son.  I can’t change that, and I won’t be upset about it.  It just is.

In the end, I’ll try to be like both Leibniz and Newton.  Like Leibniz, I’ll work as hard as I can to try to understand the “why”, but like Newton, if I don’t get there, I’m good with that.

I mean, they were okay with your mom, so you should cut them some slack.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

46 thoughts on “Purpose, Calculus, and the “Why” of Life”

  1. Ecclesiastes 1:9

    …8All things are wearisome, more than one can describe; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear content with hearing. 9What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 10Is there a case where one can say, “Look, this is new”? It has already existed in the ages before us.…

    What are the foundations of our beliefs and actions? History has built the civilization we enjoy by accumulating small pebbles of wisdom based upon experience. Every once in a while, some misguided action tears down years or centuries of progress by ignoring or misunderstanding the basic truths that underlie all that has gone before.

    Rudyard Kipling, with his gift as a poet and prophet, has put this into focus in his poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” Although written in 1919, it is pertinent to the conditions that exist in the world today. His “Gods of the Copybook Headings” are, in effect, those rules of human conduct that are so well defined by centuries of experience that they have become immutable. To disregard them, says Kipling, will inevitably lead to failure and destruction.

    The quote you are referring to is “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” It is attributed to Ayn Rand, a Russian-American writer and philosopher

    Hubris from GOOD TIMES, fails and Bad times occur.

    Winter is here.

    Michael

    1. There’s even an aphorism about the foolishness of tearing down the works that came before you – just because you don’t see their utility:

      “It is unwise to tear down a fence, before one understands fully why it was built in the first place.”

      If all of us would just follow this simple piece of advice, we might not (as a civilization, at least) have to spend so much time rebuilding that which had already been built – so long ago.

  2. Ah….calculus jokes. Brings back good memories of my days studying engineering. We would often study in an empty classroom in the evening to work through problems on the chalkboards (yes it was a long time ago as there were no whiteboards then). After a while, everyone would eventually get deliriously tired and the silliness began with all sorts of crazy stuff getting written on the boards. I’ll never forget one night that a classmate said he knew the meaning of life and then wrote on the board…..Life = partial derivative of Reality with respect to time (in mathematical notation of course). We were studying fluid mechanics so he used the newly learned convective derivative to “follow the fluid particle” in which case the particle happened to be an individual human being. We all started laughing partly because we were tired, but also because technically he had just provided an accurate definition to the meaning of life (albeit an impractical one). I guess you had to be there, but that one is still right up there with E=mc2 in my book.

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      https://twitter.com/i/status/1745524322138018064

      …a team forged in the fire of DEI…

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      …making products whose failure could make you DIE…

      https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/240110163531-01-boeing-737-max-door-design.jpg

      …if you ride on Alaska Airlines…

      https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1745508261996945746

      Hey, Spirit Aerosystems is hiring…

      https://twitter.com/JimHansonDC/status/1745550469018099792/photo/1

      …because the door to opportunity opened (heh-pun) when they fired MARK J. SUCHINSKI, who documented what it’s REALLY like working for Spirit…

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mLhJH0VIa8NoG_6UR8zOUj5g78s5aFML/view

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pzxFhXIxXWUjZkAaLGICuyR8Vi-u1HN6/view

      Folks, math proficiency, work ethic and meritocracy matter. MPWEAMM.

      1. Oops, my bad. Suchinski is a Spirit VP defendant. Hang Li (an Asian guy?) is the shareholder plaintiff.

    2. Oh, I’ve been there. Went to the library, studied, and then back to the dorm. Realized I’d done no work since I’d been on a closed path.

  3. You, sir, are a true Christian philosopher. If you do make it to the end of Job, you learn that God is in charge, and that fact has to be the basis upon which to keep living.

    1. Attempted several times and I’ve never been able to finish Job. I think Ecclesiastes is as fine a summary of life’s “Why?”

      1. It took me a long time to find Ecclesiastes but when I did I was relieved to finally cast off the years of gaslighting by the merchants of progress.

        No, the jerks won’t get what’s coming to them. No, there is no justice or “karma” in the universe (aka on Earth). No, she will not one day find me attractive for being so nice. No, that psychopath will not have his brains vented by a rock but instead will be your boss, over and over again. No, there is no amount of study, or skill, or wealth, or any other path that can liberate us from this cursed world.

        There is our lot and how we chose to find joy in our toil. All here is vanity, aka pointless.

        That book is a tough rub but it cuts to the core of a lot of those questions without good answers that so often get turned into dogma. Nothing new.

        For me it was never the darkness of this world that was the problem but rather the layers upon layers of lies twisting and perverting and hiding the Truth to keep us trapped in the dismal, empty pursuits of the merchants. Striving for the wind…

        But then on our watch we have fallen a long way when it comes to eat, drink, and be merry with our brothers and sisters. Perhaps soon we will have a great convergence of our individual lots, and in the pyre of this particular iteration we will find the joy of simply being together once again.

    1. Thanks, Ricky! That was a thoroughly delightful and enlightening read – which happens to largely mirror many of my own observations/suppositions after a lifetime of noticing the beautiful ‘symmetry’ between mathematics and most of the physical world (and the physics that describes it). 🙂

      1. This, sir – is the opening question to a wonderful evening of conjecture. If’n you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods, I’d gladly share my best beers and/or scotches with you over said discussions. 😉

  6. Your thesis assumes a logical, rational universe, but we live in illogical, irrational times. I used to believe that if I worked hard, followed the rules set by tradition and was patient, all good things would come to me. And that was indeed the case…until recently. My sons can’t follow that path, because they are pale males. No matter how hard they work, or how patient they are, the rules have changed, and now consist of just one: scrap the old rules in order to disfavor people just like them.

    Everything progresses in a continuum, and the story of mankind is inherently cyclical. We will eventually turn the corner and slowly creep back to a place where logic and reason prevail. Won’t be tomorrow, and probably not in my lifetime. But I have hope for my children and grandchildren. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

    1. I’d disagree – I don’t in any world expect one, though I plan for one. I’m writing about the second part tomorrow (my time).

      Which is nice. Classic CS.

  7. When I deployed to Iraq back in December 2003, I took along a “Magic 8 Ball” (hereinafter ‘M8B’). I thought it would be funny. (I also took a compilation of Kipling prose and verse, and used “The White Man’s Burden” to explain to people why we were there.) I consulted the M8B before every mission outside the wire – and that was over 200 missions in the 13 months I was there that time.

    The M8B was never wrong. The only times it gave unequivocal answers (“Ask again later”), conditions or plans changed before we left the wire.

    It was the creepiest thing I’ve ever experienced. I grew to be terrified of the thing, but I couldn’t just get rid of it. I took it back home with me and put it on top of the bookcase where the children couldn’t get to it. It eventually leaked to death, staining the top of the bookcase blue. I smashed it to bits with a hammer, just to make sure, before I threw the pieces away.

    “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

    1. Maybe it’s because of the way that I think – but I can’t help but wonder why you didn’t ask the M8B:

      If I buy a {specifically named} lottery ticket – will it be a winner?

      It would have had one of 3 outcomes:
      1) Made you a millionaire, (maybe all at once, maybe after a couple of wins – depending upon jackpot size)
      2) Made you a millionaire, (maybe – depending upon how many times it wasn’t correct), or
      3) Break you of your fear of it always being correct.

      I’d say no matter which way it worked out – it’d be a win. 😉

    2. I 100% believe that, because similar things have happened to me. The code that operates the Universe is out there . . . and causes things like that to happen.

  8. Hey count me in, I enjoyed your mom too. Was turning over a new figleaf, trying to be Inclusive. Love Wins!

    ‘. . . his way with words and skill at communicating, even his sense of humor were nothing for him to be personally proud of – they were on loan from God.’

    That is the strange truth of it all ritee. It is the same with spiritual insight. Those with some understanding of Scripture and matters of spirit receive the ability as a loan, or a gift, from God. Same with musical talent, Wilder good looks, etc. No call to be proud of ourselves for receiving a present.

    Gratitude’s the best attitude.

  9. Proverbs 19:21 says it all. Paraphrase: “Men make all sorts of plans but it is the purpose of God that prevails”. Touchstone verse for my family and tribe. I have to be careful to get the order correct. I have told people in the past that a touchstone verse for my family was Proverbs 21:19. That is a different message altogether!!

  11. “was really in favor of executing counterfeiters and people who clipped coins.”

    Wow, I didn’t know Newton was an anti-semite.

  12. Thought I wanted to be an engineer; then Calc III reared its ugly head. Hence a MBA wsn’t far down the road.

    If you think about what too much, why will make no sense.

    1. Heck I had to take Algebra I twice. In HIGH SCHOOL. Raised my grade to a C-.

      Took my degree in English.

  14. As a person much smarter than I has noted, the phrase “Life is lived forwards but understood backwards” comes to mind. Often events which seemingly had random or even bad impacts turn out later to be for our benefit in ways we could not have foreseen at the time: the job not taken, the relationship not followed out, the bad event (let us call it a layoff or two, shall we) that ends up forcing one down a different path – all of these are interpreted at the time as bad. Only time itself reveals their impact and benefit.

    That, and knowing Who wins in the end, of course.

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