Without the lengthy mathematical proofs and geometric demonstrations...
Trust me on this, I spent the first couple years of my "retirement" thinking on just this subject and had several hundred pages written before I
lost my hard drive.
The number 42, both in it's current pop culture infamy as well as it's pre-Adams roots in the western psyche divining off majikal series like (3, 7,
11) and oral traditions (think what comes after 40 years lost in the desert), is the linear thinking, western equivalent to a more Eastern, almost Zen
understanding of the limitations of existence.
It's our (almost subconcious) understanding of the falsehoods in rigourous, dichotomous, black and white thinking.
Eastern understanding portrays the assumed dichotomies of existense in the Yin & Yang.
Prima facia, half Yin and Half Yang. But not so. Even within the polar opposites of Yin and Yang (or male and female if you prefer) there are elements
of the other. Look at the "eyes" or holes of each. It's the opposite, or in a manner a "third" thing altogether given the relationship.
So the whole in this case is not 50% Yin (for example) as there's always something lacking. Maybe 1, 2...or 8% perhaps.
The exact percent doesn't matter in eastern philosophy, but it so does to perfectabilist us. Whether technically correct or not, what we ascribe to
this "maximum" half of defining qualities is a sense of the understood "42" or what I like to consider the common man's infinity.
Finite infinity, if you will, of a discerable and graspable nature.
Example: Gender is a concept that requires a basic familiarity with it's subsets, male and female. But also more. Interaction, deviation, etc. It all
relates. So while it may be accurately said that one knows both components making up 100% of gender by knowing the two halfs, knowing each alone does
not begin to approach 50% of the knowledge required to comprehend gender.
In shorthand, the most one can achieve from any single perspective is 42%. Again, it's just shorthand. More than the big numbers in the bible meaning
"alot" like raining 40 days and 40 nights, but less than the precise mathematical truism of 50.
42 is then merely describing the process of
approaching knowledge, but it also quite accurately and completely describes the human existence of
flawed godhood.
Would love feedback if anyone even
remotely gets where I'm going with this. I may dust off my notes and try penning that pop culture
philosophy book one more time.
42 was just one number I delved into. 3 is the biggest.
