{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

thank you for all the links & the name of the books which you have been providing.  I am jotting down all of them,and I promise that I would make use of them as well,soon enough.  However, I just want to dig a little deeper into Schopenhauer's philosophy for some more time.

Take your time, Holden.  We are each on our own peculiar little paths in this life.  There is certainly no rush to get to where we are going, since we are, ultimately, going nowhere in particular.

When you are compelled to do so, do you think you would be interested in going through any of the old Docliani "experimental New Math"  high school books?

If so, I think it would be less expensive for you to order from amazon DOT com rather than amazon DOT in ( global shipping )

Example:  Modern Algebra: Structure and Method (1976) sells for about $7 plus the shipping.

or Teacher's Edition ... or another Teacher's Edition

As opposed to same book from India site over 7000 rupees, which is, as you must know, of course, over $120.

[UPDATE: 9 May 2017] Algebra 1 (Dolciani/Swanson/Graham c.1985 Teacher's Edition) covers proving theorems in more detail than any Algebra text I've ever seen.  That is reason enough to invest attention into this unique text.  [Note: disregard misprint of authors and page numbers.  Just verify with seller that it is ISBN-10: 0395343747 or ISBN-13: 978-0395343746]

And please do not be insulted if you think that such an Algebra book is beneath you.  I am ordering a copy myself just to see how the material is presented.  I had this book as a freshman in high school when I was 13 years old.    I suppose I was able to just waltz into a community college at age 27 and ace Calculus I and II after doing a little review was because I must have learned something in high school way back when.  I was very captivated with mathematics at that age until I lost interest in everything at age 17 and ... well ... Life got in my way and took me on a strange trip through the Amerikan Department of Corrections and into the State Park Service as a state slave ever so grateful to be employed by his masters.

So, when you are up to it, I'll be looking [working] through the Dolciani series again as well since I have decided to rebuild from the ground up.   In the past I had been obsessed with Calculus.  I even referred to it as "The Calculus".   Now I am more concerned with developing the ability to actually THINK in the way a pure mathematician would think.   I want to be more than a number crunching calculating machine, more than a "computer".  I want to learn how to become a man who can think as opposed to what I have become, just a man who can compute and calculate.

Don't get me wrong; I prefer calculating, computing, algebraic manipulations and arithmetic.  I love that shiit.  I really do.  I never tire of implementing the Euclidean algorithm (the Division Algorithm).  I enjoy writing computer code to do this, and making the program display the results at each step.  It's the simple things that make me smile.

The thing is, I am stubbornly facing the aspects of pure mathematics in which I feel a total lack of confidence, that aspect of mathematics that requires me to actually think, to construct a proof in a formal manner.   I would like to develop skills in this area if it is the last thing I do on earth.   Liberate mankind from the prison colony of existence?  I'm not the Buddha.  I've become a strange creature who is self-absorbed and preoccupied with my own peculiar agenda. 

When the guy who collects the "garbage" came through while I was smoking a cigarette and looking over a problem, he intrusively asked me, "What do you do?" 

I know he was asking me where I was employed, but I responded, "I do math."

"What do you mean, you do math?"

"I study math."

"Are you going to school?"

"Nope."

We left it at that.  I finished my cigarette with a grin.

It's not too late to start over.   Even though I'm 50 years old, there is nothing else I would rather be doing than retraining myself in pure mathematics, since now I have reached a level of maturity where I don't take offense when I find myself stumped.  Instead, I embrace the consciousness of my own ignorance as an invitation to learn to think in a different way than just diving into the arithmetic algorithm like a machine.

I know you prefer to think of math in terms of chaos and fractals, but there is something to be said for an axiomatic presentation of mathematics as a system of logic.

Anyway, as much as we might resent having to endure an existence we never asked for, it looks as though we both might be sustained by our intellectual development, and by "intellectual," I suppose I mean spiritual and psychological development.

In the meantime, it is great to have made contact with someone who is so captivated with the works of Schopenhauer.  I have been babbling about Schopenhauer for decades to people ... and if they have heard of him, they already write him off as a woman-hating atheist. 

"Life is evil."   

Wow.  And here we are, these living creatures who must kill to eat ...

Reading Schopenhauer is heavier than dropping LSD.  Awakening philosophic wonder, he is one of the true philosophers, like one of the ancients - not an academic philosopher.

I wish I could think in the manner of Euclid rather than just memorize his algorithms!

Would we create our own brute-force calculus if we were not taught the refined modern versions of Newton's and Liebniz's?

PS:

There is also an inexpensive teacher's edition of Algebra 2 and Trigonometry (revised edition 1983)