The Hairy Ball Problem

I feel bad for having to use that title but no, don't worry, I'm not going to discuss a personal issue and as crass and amusing as the title seems, it is a real problem in math. But I sometimes wonder, why does it seem that no matter how hard you try, you can't find a consistent ideology? Why does it seem that there's always turbulence in the system? Why can't things just smoothly flow? Why do the most innocent ideologies give us turbulence and conflict?  Well, I came upon the Harry Ball Theorem a few days ago and I quickly made the analog, maybe it's not exactly apt, but seems appropriate in my opinion to life in general and The Great Search for Truth™ or whatever contrived word or phrase you'd like to give it. I try to avoid putting much time in any one form of symbolism, even the mathematical as well as linguistic, ie, 'quotes to live by', because life is just much more complex as to be contained in such brevity and expressed as such but I can't help but think of the beauty of the yin and yang here, representing how the universe flows together while simultaneously representing the turbulence inherent to the system.

The Hairy Ball Theorem, roughly speaking, represents the problem of flatly combing the 'hair' of a sphere in a way in which all hairs on the entirety of the ball flow in smooth vectors, meaning no parts or hard tangential directions. Think a bit and you'll realize it's impossible; turbulence, or at least null flow, is inherent to the structure of the system. Relevantly, I used to wonder why wifi devices emitted donut-shaped waves instead of isotropic, or spherical, only to find out this is the cause. Now what does this have to do with life and ideologies thereof? Well, I'm willing to admit it's a potentially flawed view but I tend to see survival strategies in life, ideologies, religions, general life advice, in logic trees of 3D space taking different directions based on applicability and relevance just as I sometimes think of conversation in a sort of branch-like view, words being a hyperlink to other words and ideas. And when I do, when trying to put these problems in logical form in 3D space, I eventually have these inconsistencies in logical flow where things just don't mesh well. Maybe this problem is a good representation of the turbulence I see in general life and it can provide more evidence that conflict is just inevitable in this universe and acknowledging and accepting some amount of it is a healthy survival strategy for life. Of which I have long accepted but of course I'm insecure and always looking for more confirmation that I'm not a total idiot.

Maybe my way of thinking is due to me having an OCD-like habit of wanting to abstract problems to visual spaces when I can because I suppose I'm more a visual thinker. So seeing logical flows of human problems in 3D spaces, the Hairy Ball Theorem is a naturally provocative analog for me when relating to the greater problems we face and I can't help that somewhere out there, perhaps in the disciplines of math and science, maybe they can help us find a more elegant way to represent the turbulence problem other than the clunky, inelegant, one-fits-all ideologies we typically use to try to make our lives flow more smoothly. It reminds me of Chaos Theory or the happiness paradox in that stressing so much to be happy can paradoxically make you unhappy; acknowledging the chaos in the system can bring a smoother flow to life and at least make it seem more orderly by knowing how and where it fits in, even if the chaos exists in a 'black box' of known unknowns. But if you actually do give any credence to this analog, it's important to stress that turbulence is the anomaly and for the most part, if you sail the proverbial waters long enough and be persistent enough, you will encounter smoother flowing waters.

Incidentally, I get annoyed sometimes with my insistence of wanting to relate ideas that work on smaller scales to bigger scales, where they can infamously break down and maybe this represents the problem of scaling orderly systems, but I suppose it's the human side of me that despite knowing better, still wants to try to find as much order in the system as I can while knowing of the disorder inherent in the system and knowing some amount of disorder is accounted for and needed for the system to work as-is. Anyway, I've probably said a whole lot of nothing but I have to remember I created this blog for therapeutic purposes and writing it forces me to order my thoughts more and express them, even if there's nobody to express them to. And because my scattered thoughts are insufficient for entertainment and as is customary, I'll add some music mentions. There's not been enough Silver Jews in my life lately so I think they deserve a mention. I discovered their music around '08, I believe, and it became a small awakening into a sub-genre of alternative rock that I've barely heard before. The most apt song of theirs that might be relevant to this post is People, which like most of their music, has a sort of lackadaisical, alt-country twanginess fronted by pensive, self-aware, and sometimes self-deprecating lyrics that you'd rarely find in typical country music and that's more reminiscent of another favorite band of mine called Ugly Casanova, which was a temporary spinoff of Modest Mouse, if you want to call it that, a sort of less twangy Pavement. Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

Other favorites of mine from the Silver Jews are The Wild Kindness, Sleeping Is The Only Love, Tennessee and lest we forget, one of Berman's last songs before his tragic suicide, coincidentally or not, named All My Happiness Is Gone.

RIP David Berman

PS: I know my blog has been lonely and conversely, I've been less lonely even though I'd try often to be alone when with a significant other because, as they say, misery loves company. But I miss that, just being alone, having time to think to myself and find myself and where and how I belong in this world, something I find attractive in the ascetic life of anchoritic monks. Maybe being with a significant other is why I haven't posted to this blog in a long while but it's not necessarily that what I say here I could discuss with an SO. No, if I did, the SO would be either lost at what I'm trying to say, rightfully so in a sense because I'm not good at vocal expression (or just as well this could only make sense to me because I'm stupid), or just not care which I can understand. Another reason is that I get easily distracted and without much time alone, I just don't want to bother. And besides, these are just silly ideas that in the end, are nothing of import to probably anyone but myself.