Have you ever thought that sometimes logic fails us? That getting from point A to point B should have been possible but somehow each logical step has led to an entirely different outcome than expected, perhaps even one that wasn’t rational to expect?
Perhaps that is how someone went from thinking a clam was a weird, goofy living rock to thinking hey let’s have a clam bake.
This then is what math, and especially the proof-based discipline of geometry, ought to be good for: getting us back to cause and effect, one plus one equaling two instead of three or four. Letting us stop “believing” in things that ought to be probable or dis-provable. Yet things don’t always work that way.
Perhaps we have failed geometry. Or geometry has failed us. Or at least the education of geometry has failed to get us on the logical road it tried to lay out before us.
Geometry Education Has Failed Us
The square has failed us.
So too the triangle and its
constituent angles, all skewed
roughly now, snipped buds left
on the greenhouse floor
The crusader then, who feels
pain not their own and who
therefore hates dogs
on principle of feeling too much
must start, re-start, or join in late
to the war, or burn something
nearby to express themself.
Pythagoras spins in his biodegraded
dirt bed re- and re-mourning
the death of systemic reasoning.
I heard a radio snippet in which someone claimed that we only had recycling efforts because some city lost its garbage pick up contract and there was no place to put their garbage. But since there was a lot of room in the world, we didn’t really need recycling—and anyway recycling used too much water. That’s a bit like saying there is no need to wash laundry because there’s lots of clothing in the world and we can always just get some clean stuff to wear — and anyway laundry uses too much water.
Today is Earth Day. Maybe we don’t have to wait until there is no more space on the planet for garbage in order to consider the water spent in recycling to be a good use.
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