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

Holden,

While searching for a good book on polar coordinates, specifically conics in polar coordinates, I was once again disappointed to find so little being offered as far as detailed instruction.  Most encyclopedic texts offer a handful of pages on the topic and just cover the topics in a kind of chart format.  So, I did some searching for authors in India where there appeared to at least be a few books devoted specifically to coordinate geometry; but I am not sure how much attention is given to specifically polar coordinates representation.

Anyway, the motivation for this post is that, after going through one comment after another on a related blog in India, I became so disgusted with the mention of "rank" in JEE Main and JEE Advanced (Joint Entrance Examination: engineering entrance exam), that I am at the point now that I want to move along to something altogether different.

I can understand why you might have mixed feelings concerning mathematics and why you dream of "Fringe Mathematics".    It's a shame that education in Industrial Civilization has become so competitive and that one can't find any texts that explore the depths of a subject without the goal being entirely focused on "where you will rank" in some goddamned examination for entrance into an engineering college.

Is it just me, or is there something sinister and dystopian about what this focus on "rank" must do to any student's attitude toward mathematical knowledge?

I just wanted to confer with you a certain amount of disgust and disdain when it comes to formal education and the depressing effect career-oriented professionalism has on my own mental life.

I attempted suicide (with a bottle of asprin and a bottle of whiskey) at age 19.

I sometimes wonder how it is that my obsession with math has grown even stronger at my age ... 51, around the age when the Steppenwolf had planned to kill himself.

Maybe it is my way of defying Nature [God] and society [gods].

What I mean is that I have survived the ordeal of having lived the life of a "loser", and I am showing myself that the subject can be approached without all the stress which is ultimatley created by society, society which starts with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.

I am not studying math so as to send rockets to rocks in outerspace, but solely to get through a day in the life of Mr. Nobody, as an alternative to drinking myself into a pair of handcuffs.

I knew that this obsession with rank is not only responsible for many suicides, but it is also responsible for a lifelong hatred of mathematics which many will associate with that engineering exam.

I am also reminded of the villages where the young women are discouraged from studying anything at all since they are needed by their immediate family to go out and prostitute their bodies.

We live in a world where many would scoff at a "garbage man" studying higher mathematics simply because they feel there is no sense in studying anything difficult if it is not going to be applied in some job-related activity which fattens their bank account.

Needless to say, here in the states, a "garbage collector" often earns far more money than the engineering student who can't land a job and ends up serving donuts at Dunkin, or works the late shift at the liquor store. 

So, one must be careful about any guidance one receives from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.

As you say, Schopenhauer will be ignored by the masses, and Lady Gaga embraced.

There is no chance of saving any kids from the machinery of society which has them competing for high rank in society's exams.

I am sure there are those who would have killed themselves by now if they me, but I must have been blessed with a certain kind of stubborness and defiance where I am able to return to studying out of sheer curiosity about how to approach such a vast subject as mathematics, and to see how many days and hours I might fill in a calm stressfree approach.

Do you see how defiant this approach is?   Do you see that it requires a great deal of contempt for society's values?