Indefinity

Infinity may be mentioned more often, but indefinity is more closely that which can be achieved. It does not claim something as grandiose as infinity, yet it can still be immense beyond anyone's imagination.

And it is not to claim that indefinity can ever replace infinity in mathematics, since that is clearly false -- try to divide any number by 0. The answer is not indefinite, it is infinity. But indefinity is more of a description of physical reality, where a quantum entity is not a continuum, nor is space a continuum of zero sized points so much as a set of locations that are occupied by something that can be measured.

So, in the physical world, unless there are truly an infinite number of objects all exactly crammed into an exactly boundless space that is infinitely large, then there is only an indefinity.

Mentally, one can construct sentences that logically conjugate all the permutations of concepts, even resulting in infinite infinities, and so forth. Yet not a single infinity can be demonstrated in a physical way. There is in a sense a real, kinetic and participatory indefinity. There is only a potential abstraction with which to demonstrate infinity.

I would think of indefinity as being a worker class and infinity as being upper class. The upper class has loftier speech, but the worker class provides for the leisure to speak it -- indefinity is the coal which is burned to light the artwork. I would think that Mark Twain might have had a mite more respect for the lesser of the classes.

After all, what is infinity but an immensely large bag packed with an uncountably immense number of zeros?

Workaholism

It is a terrible problem, workaholism. I'm not sure it is a purely American problem, but certainly many Americans suffer from it.

The reasons Americans are prone to workaholism are economic and social, of course, but also endemic to industrial, highly competitive structured environments. It is just as easy to be workaholic on the farm, as well, where 24 hours might not be enough to get everything done. Americans tend to honor caffeinated beverages and individual achievement -- we try to race the Devil and expect to win.

It hurts your body and probably your mind to repeat anything over and over ad infinitum. This is the death of humanity but the realm of machinery. Humans are less likely to integrate huge amounts of information of such repetitious nature without huge amounts of error and negligence -- wearing out attention, assured of mistakes. It seems fair to allow for machines this realm of capability.

So, "one day", it is often said, we will all live in leisure and give over our minds to purely esoteric and profound knowledge -- no further need to get our hands dirty. The machines will do all the wretched work.

But there are no days like that. Even with huge amounts of actual repetitious actions done by machinery, there remains immense amounts of wretched work left for humans, if not even more than before machines were employed "to simplify" our lives. So I toil away, climbing to the peaks of the next horizon, hoping to find the sea of leisure, where I can say "I am finished."

Yet, the reward is more in line with the pellet for the rat in a plastic box. The lever is pressed and pressed until a pellet comes out. So long as the pellet is given at intervals that are at least sooner than the spontaneous recovery time, the rat will press the lever with undiminished vigor until it dies from exhaustion.