A WORLD OF MIRACLES

A Fictional Story on the Topics of Non-Euclidean Geometry, Existence and Morality

Jian Kang

2005, 2011

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CHAPTER 1
The Start of Exploration
The Birth of Philosophy and Non-Euclidean Geometry

Thunder-like applauses burst from the audience as a lovely white rabbit appeared
in the magician‟s hat.
“Thank you! Thank you very much! I hope everyone enjoyed the show tonight!”
The young magician gave his thanks to the audience and left the stage, leaving the
puzzled people wondering how he had done the trick.
“Hey, it was a nice show tonight, John,” a high school girl ran toward the
magician as soon as he stepped in the back stage. She was Emily, John‟s younger
cousin. The magician grinned: “Thanks, Emily. It was just a simple one, really…”
“But it seems so unbelievable! I just couldn‟t believe my eyes!”
“Well, I understand how confused people can feel when they are fooled by their
own eyes.” John stared at his hat, from where the rabbit had been pulled out, “you
know, this is also the way we human-beings see the world. We are living in a world
full of wonders …”
“Like the pyramids?” Emily interrupted.
“Not just the ones built by humans (let‟s assume that the pyramids were created
by human-beings), but, more importantly, the miracles created by the nature. To
understand this, just imagine that we, like the ancient ancestors, have little
„knowledge‟ of the world. What would we think about the change of seasons, the
burning sun, the shining stars, the soft breeze, the forests and all kinds of animals
around us? At the moment when you see all these things for the first time, Emily,
wouldn‟t you be amazed?”
“Absolutely! I guess I‟ll spend all my life in wondering what‟s going on right in
front of my eyes and yet have no clue at all! Oh my… how pathetic! Now I feel so

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lucky that I‟m living in the 21st century and that people have obtained lots of
knowledge of the world.”
“You are probably right. Now we indeed have some acceptable explanations to
the nature. But never forget all what we learn is just a drop of water, if the whole
secret of the world is the ocean. Two reasons for that- firstly, I guess you would agree
that there are still so many things out there, the mystery of aliens for instance, which
we are not yet able to explain; secondly, like a wise man once said, even highly
warranted scientific statements are open to further scrutiny and are not simply „facts‟
or absolutely „truth‟. All what we have so far are just explanations that make sense to
us for the moment, but they are not necessarily „true‟.”
“Wait, wait, wait… The first reason I can understand, but the next one is very
confusing.”
“Let me put it in another way… You have watched the movie „The Matrix‟,
haven‟t you?” asked John with a gentle smile on his face.
“Oh yes! That is a fantastic movie! I wonder what if the movie was telling a true
story… wouldn‟t it be scary?”
“That‟s the whole point of it.” John seemed very satisfied with the answer from
his audience. “Among all the sharp sentences from the movie, I found this one the
most interesting - I hope you remember it, too - “What is „real‟? Define „real‟…”
“Aha, this was what Morphius once said to Neo, trying to convince him to accept
the truth of the world. See? My memory is not too bad.”
“That‟s right. What I‟m telling you is that the idea in “The Matrix” does relate to
our every-day life. You know, every single thing we know about the nature is just
signals in our brain, but not necessarily „true‟: for example, now you „know‟ I‟m
sitting here and chatting with you because you see me and hear me; however, what
you see is just what your eyes are telling you; what you hear is just what your ears are
telling you ---- in fact, your sensory organs might be sending you „wrong‟ signals and,
- though it sounds pretty scary - you might not exist at all!”
“I think I‟m getting it… what you are saying is that we can‟t always trust our
eyes because they sometimes lie to us. In short, „what we see might not be what it
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is.‟…… But if we can‟t trust our sensory organs, what else can we rely on to explore
the world?”
“What a great question! But don‟t be hurry. Let me ask you a question…” John
raised his hat and smiled, “what did you see in my magic show?”
“Hum… I saw you put some beautiful ribbons into the hat and then the rabbit
jumped out from it.”
“Right. That is what your eyes told you – ribbons went into the hat and a rabbit
came out. However, you know your eyes were telling you a lie because ribbons can
never transform into a rabbit, can they?”
“Of course not. That‟s why I‟m so eager to know the secret to your magic, John!”
Emily was hooked now.
“I notice you used the phrase „eager to know about the secret‟. I like it, because it
is this sentence that gave birth to philosophy. Back to more than 2000 years ago, an
ancient Greek philosopher believed that when people were amazed or confused by
something, they wonder why it was like so; they would ask: „what makes it work like
this? What is really going on?‟ You know, this was the very start of philosophy. Many
people look at the nature and think it is an unbelievable miracle - you still remember
what you felt when you saw I pulled the rabbit out of my hat, don‟t you?”
“Yes. I couldn‟t believe what I saw. I‟m pretty clear on the point that a trick is all
what the show is about, but I just want to know how you did it.”
“It is always easier to get a better view when you are outside of the picture. It is
the case of the magic show. However, the situation would differ a lot when we talk
about the nature. We know this world is not only a trick played by some great
magician because we are living as a part of it. In fact, we are rather like the rabbit that
was pulled out of the hat – the only difference is the rabbit never realized it was in a
magic show. But we do - we know it by heart that we are a part of a fantastic
gigantic-scaled magic show, and we want to know the secret to it.”
“Whoa… I used to consider philosophy as some thing so far away from my life
and only bored people are interested in it. Now it looks like I figured it all wrong!”
“You really should say sorry to the philosophers, you know that?” John laughed.
5
“But it is okay to make such mistakes as long as you finally discover the truth of
philosophy. I guess I could put it this way: we people are like the micro-creatures
living on the furs of the rabbit – philosophers try so hard to climb to the end of the
furs to get a better view of the magic show; on the other hand, some people would
rather to live in the very bottom of the furs where they can stay warm and refuse to
think of anything about the great show – unfortunately, they occupy most of our
population.”
“It is a sad fact, isn‟t?” Emily sighed. However, this time she got no response
from John – now his eyes were fixed on the ground. Emily looked down to find out a
rabbit sitting right beneath them, with a letter tied on its back by a ribbon.
“How strange!” John picked up the letter and unfolded it.

Dear Dr. Miller:

I guess by this point, you have noticed that my ideas are represented by my
messengers: Emily and John; and as their conversation goes on, I will express more. I
hope you don‟t mind the way I‟m writing this paper. Now let me start from the birth of
Euclidean geometry. As John said to Emily, philosophy is mostly born from people‟s
curiosity. And So is non-Euclidean geometry, I would like to say. After Euclidean
published his great work, many found P5 too complicated. With the belief that P5
could be induced by the other four principles, many people devoted their lifetime into
finishing the proof. It takes curiosity to come up with the question, and unbelievable
courage to walk along the path to eliminate P5. However, after two thousand years,
the questionable P5 still remained unsolved. Then it was Gauss, Jenos Bolyai and
Lobachevski who wondered “what if P5 is indeed independent of others and a new
type of geometry would be generated by substituting P5 by its converse statement?”
Setting first step here, they began their lonely journey to discover non-Euclidean
geometry and finally achieved greatness. Once again, people‟s curiosity played an
essential role in the revolution of geometry.
In short, it is reasonable to conclude that almost all creations of men are really
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brothers and sisters – and people‟s curiosity is their mother (and maybe courage or
hard work is the farther); additionally, in this huge family. I found philosophy and
Non-Euclidean geometry is twins since they do have many things in common, which I
will talk about in details later on.
I guess I‟ll have to say goodbye here and save sometime for my messengers so
that they can go through their sparkling conversation. We shall meet again very soon.

GOOD DAY!

Jian Kang
Apr, 4th, 2005

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CHAPTER 2
Is there an Island in the Ocean?
Descartes’ Philosophy and Cantor’s Set Theory

Emily was so shocked by the mysterious letter that she kept talking about it with
John all the way back home, till the moment she fell asleep at night. On the next
morning, when the beautiful sun shine jumped into the room and waked her up, she
seemed a little unconscious and angry. She had had a bad dream.
Knock, knock… It was John asking her to have breakfast.
“John! You won‟t believe what I dreamed last night!” Emily spoke loudly, “I
dreamed that Jian Kang, the should-be-cursed writer of the letter, was an evil monster!
He was sitting in front of a bizarre computer, typing something like crazy… I was
standing right behind him and looking at the screen.”
“Really? What did he write there?” asked John.
“That‟s the scary part! I saw nothing but our names on the screen! When I just
began to wonder what in God‟s name this was all about, that Jian Kang turned his
ugly face and looked at me and smiled – John, I swear to God that was the evilest
smile I have ever seen! Then he pressed the Delete key on the keyboard, and you
guess what… My body began to tremble and part, like a piece of board in a terrible
storm! I couldn‟t do anything other than screaming and watching my own body
disappearing!”
What made Emily surprised is John‟s answer: “how do you know your dream was
not true?”
“What?! Are you out of your mind?!”
“You don‟t understand.” John explained, “just like what I told you yesterday,
what you „think‟ is true might not be true; similarly, what you think is „untrue‟ might
actually be the „reality‟--you never know if your sense organs betray you…”
“I didn‟t forget your words, but I just have kind of strange feeling after the

8
nightmare. It‟s like I was struggling and so tired in an ocean. I tried so hard to find an
island so that I could set my feet on it…”
“Aha! That‟s exactly what Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) thought…” John looked
fairly happy.
“Who is Descartes, though?”
“He was a French man, a great philosopher, physicist and mathematician. Many
people consider him as the father of modern western philosophy.”
“Wow…”
“A very important man in history, wasn‟t he? I think the most famous sentence he
said, as you must have heard this before, was „Cogito, ergo sum‟. In English, it should
be „I meditate and therefore I exist.‟”
“Oh yes, I have heard this sentence so many times! But I don‟t know the meaning
of it.”
“Descartes believed the only thing people could rely on to discover the world was
logic, not eyes or ears. In short, he started off by doubting everything in his life and
tried to find something that was surly true. It‟s like what you said. He was struggling
so hard to search for a solid land in the ocean.”
“It seems like I do have some talent in philosophy!” Emily said quite proudly,
“maybe I should have studied this subject better two years ago… but anyways, did he
succeed?”
“That‟s the key part. Descartes refused to trust any „knowledge‟ that was given by
neither others nor his own sense organs so that he could start his search for the
„absolute existence‟.”
I guess the situation is like when you decide to start a construction project
somewhere, you have to clear up all the junks on the ground.”
“You got it. So Descartes began by doubting everything in the universe – every
single bit of knowledge. By doing so, however, he found one thing he could be sure –
his doubt itself, or his meditation. And hence, since his meditation exists, as a
„thinking individual‟, he himself had to exist.”
“„Meditate and therefore exist.‟ … His thoughts were really like mathematical
9
proofs!”
“Aren‟t they! I hope you didn‟t forget Descartes was a top mathematician as well.
Now let‟s go downstairs and have breakfast.” John looks at Emily‟s eyes and says,
“surprises await.”

When Emily saw a large envelop lying on the dinner table, she realized what the
“surprise” was about: “is it the letter from yesterday? Again?!”
“No…This is a different one, but from the same author though.” John said as he
passed the “evil” envelope to Emily, “I found it beside my pillow when I woke up this
morning… It‟s a gift from the night angels, huh?”
Emily did not appreciate the joke at all. She grabbed the letter and read it loudly
with awful lots of anger:

Dr. Miller:
So we meet again. Since my messengers have already talked about Descartes‟
philosophy, why don‟t we have a discussion on that topic here? Personally, I regard
Descartes as a Genius who added a whole new dimension to our knowledge and
enlightened our civilizations. Somehow, when I was reading the works from the
French philosopher, I found some interesting bridges between his ideas and our
course. Now I‟m going to walk through the bridge to probably the most important city
of the Mathematic Empire – the set theory.
In the long, long history of mathematic, before Cantor (1845-1918) developed Set
Theory which became the solid standard background of Mathematic from then on,
most people barely questioned the existence and the meaning of the mathematical
systems, for instance, what is the number „1‟.

“Huh! This man must be out of his mind! He does not even know what „1‟ is.
What a fool!” Emily pointed at the dinner table, “it is „1‟ table, and there is „1‟ empty
plate on it!”
“Please continue to read the letter.” John‟s said in a peaceful voice.
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 “Sigh… alright, as you wish…” Emily kept on reading:

To the above question, most people would consider it as a fool‟s question. They
would point at themselves and answer: „I am „1‟ person! That‟s the meaning of „1‟!

“Aaah!!! It‟s soooo creepy! This evil monster reads my mind!” Emily threw the
letter to John, “I don‟t want to read it anymore!”
“This is getting quite interesting…” John caught the letter and continued to read:

However, they are wrong. A rock, a bird or a person is just some presentation of
„1‟, but not the meaning of it – in fact, you can never ever find the number „1‟
standing by itself alone in this world. Then, the question arises: does „1‟ exist at all?
This is a super scary question to think about, isn‟t it? If the answer is negative, then
every single thing based on the number system would be of no difference than
non–sense; without a doubt, the whole Mathematic Empire would collapse.
What should we do, then?
Just like Descartes found a solid land in the journey to realize the world, we have
to find something in mathematic that is independent from our intuition, a solid
groundwork which the mansion of mathematic will stand upon. And then, again,
Cantor put forward the formal definition of Empty Set as the very basis we are
looking for. It was not introduced in the notes that why and how he came up with it,
but here is my guess:
Just like Descartes questioned everything in the nature, it‟s now reasonable to
believe that nothing is guaranteed valid – why don‟t we start by assuming nothing has
absolute existence in mathematic? However, under this assumption, “nothing”, or
“emptiness”, itself has to exist. We have a contradiction! Hence, there is at least one
thing we can be sure about: the existence of “emptiness”, or, in the language of set
theory, the empty set.
Then, based on the “absolute existence” of empty set, Cantor gave his
remarkable definitions of the natural numbers:
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 „0‟ is defined as the cardinality of the empty set Ø;
„1‟ is defined as the cardinality of the set: {Ø};
„2‟ is defined as the cardinality of the set: {Ø, {Ø}}
……
In this way, the whole number system was firmly reborn, and people were ready
to rebuild the Mathematic Empire. So in my opinion, Cantor‟s set theory is a lot like a
brother of Descartes‟ philosophy: they were all created by questioning the existence
and validity of everything, finding the absolute existence, and coming up with a whole
new brilliant way to view the world – not just by intuitions any more, but by our
independent logic.
Dr. Miller, I hope you found my little discovery not too boring, and enjoyed my
messengers‟ conversations of philosophy, even they were brief and shallow. Oh, I
guess I should apologize to my poor messengers as well -now they must be dying to
figure out who we are. Let‟s keep it as a little secret for now. I‟ll talk to you later.

Nice day!

Jian Kang
Apr, 6th, 2005

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CHAPTER 3
To Be or Not to Be, it is the Question
Returning to the Question of the Existence of the World

“Hum... very interesting thoughts...” John said as he passed the secret letter back
to Emily. However, Emily did not even take a look at it.
“I just don‟t understand it, John! Why can you stand such a crazy stupid behavior
like this? That evil Jian Kang must be hiding somewhere and watching us, somehow
listening to our conversations and sending these ridiculous letters to fool us around. I
mean, what does he think he is? God?!”
John fell into deep meditation. He understood that there was always something
far away from us - the things that were beyond our vision and imagination. Descartes
hoped to escape the epistemological confines of the mind by constructing knowledge
of the external world, the self, the soul, God, ethics, and science out of the simplest,
indubitable ideas possessed innately by the mind. He tried, in short, to find a
foundation to all knowledge, as Cantor tried to find the foundation to mathematic......
“Oh by the way, where on the earth are these letters from? Could Emily‟s guess be
right? What is really going on?” John asked himself.
John‟s thinking was interrupted by a ring at the door. Before he reached the
door, it was already opened by Emily. There was nobody there - except a little white
rabbit with pink eyes. It looked pretty much like the one that amazed the audience in
John‟s magic show the last day. This time, it came back to amaze the cousins - now
the rabbit started talking!
“Hi! Fellows! You are all invited to my party tonight! Oh~~~ Yeah~~~~~~” The
little rabbit began to whistle a happy, but somewhat strange song, leaving Emily and
John standing here with their mouths wide open.
However, the song stopped all of a sudden as a little girl, who seemed to appear
from nowhere, walked into their sight. In the meanwhile, the rabbit turned back and

13
ran toward a tree in front of the house, saying loudly to itself: “Oh dear! Oh dear! I
shall be too late!” The little girl apparently saw the rabbit and ran fast toward the tree.
The rabbit took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, hurried on,
and disappeared. At this moment the little girl already made herself side by the
rabbit-hole.
“Hey! Who are you? What are you doing in my garden?” Emily shouted at the
girl. No respond. Something flashed across Emily‟s mind – it was so crazy that even
herself wouldn‟t ever believe it unless she saw it with her very own eyes today – the
little girl was Alice, and they were in „Alice's Adventures in Wonderland‟!
Fueled with great curiosity, the girl, Alice, followed the white rabbit and jumped
into the rabbit-hole. From the moment when Alice appeared and the rabbit ran away,
none of them took a look at Emily and John at all, as if they didn‟t even exist.

Now it was all quite. Soft, cool breeze blew, birds sang, the sun shined, the
traffic started to get busy, and people came out to enjoy a great Sunday – everything
happened as supposed to be, as if nothing had ever happened in this little garden –
there had been no strange little rabbit or strange little girl.
“I wonder if I was dreaming, John!” Emily sounded somewhat exited. “I saw
Alice from „Alice's Adventures in Wonderland‟!”
“I know... I saw them too,” sighs John, the magician, “and I don‟t think there is
anything to feel so excited about.”
“How can you say that?”
“I wonder if, I mean this is only my wild guess, we are living in somebody‟s
mind. In other words, we are just some characters created by someone‟s imagination.”
Emily couldn‟t believe what she heard. She looked at John: “What?!”
John continued: “Otherwise I can‟t really figure out a better explanation of where
those letters were from or what happened just a second ago... You like watching
dramas, don‟t you, Emily?”
Emily knocked her head, but she could not see John‟s point.
“When watching a drama – or in other words, when watching a character living
14
in his/her life in the drama – have you ever thought what if the characters have their
own ideas on their existence? What if they just live in a different world like we do,
but the only difference is their world is designed by the director while ours is in
someone else‟s imagination? Could it be the case that the characters in the drama
can‟t see the world outside, while we, standing way outside of the picture, can see
them from above‟?”
“Honestly, I have not...” answered Emily, “you are probably right on the point
that world of the drama might exist, but I don‟t agree with you when you say our lives
are also designed by someone else.”
“Why not?”
“Simply because it is me – and only me – who can make up my mind. If I decide
to raise my hand, I don‟t think anybody could stop me. You see?” Emily raised her
right hand upon finishing her statement.
“That‟s indeed true. However, you can never make your hand dance in the air
without get yourself injured, can you?”
“Oh that‟s the meanest argument I have ever heard.”
John laughed. “That was just an example,” he said. My point is that, you have
some freedom on yourself indeed, but it doesn‟t mean you are totally free. You, as an
individual in the nature, are still bounded by the laws of the nature: when you are born,
you open your eyes and cry - that‟s the start of the journey of your life, as well as the
start of the bound on you; then, you grew up and your childhood passed you by like a
flash; at around 14 or 15, you began to notice your physical development and spent
more and more time everyday on just starring at yourself in the mirror and doing
make-up; and in your twenty‟s, you...”
“Enough. Now I see your point. All what you are saying is that we are bounded
by the laws of the nature, right?” says Emily, somewhat angrily.
“Exactly... It‟s like apple trees may grow in different shapes depending on the
environments, but they can never grow cats.”
“Is that so? Then why a rabbit can talk? Why a little girl can jump into a
rabbit-hole?” Emily argued. Obviously she was still confused and not satisfied. How
15
many people could easily accept John‟s reasoning anyways?
“This is kind of sad to say,” sighed John, “but all evidence shows that we are
living in someone‟s imagination, and that the „someone‟ is like a god to us. We are all
just like actors and actresses, Emily, and our world is the stage. Everyone has a role in
the drama, no matter if it is right at the center of the stage under the focus lights or at
a dark corner where no one really pays much attention to. We may or may not have
audience, but we have to carry on for ourselves. We were pushed onto the stage
without taking a look at the script; however, the funny thing is, when we finish the
roles, we might find out what we did was exactly what the director wants us to do.
Some people call it destiny, but I prefer to call it the script of the drama – the director
makes up his mind and lays out some rules for our play, and these rules, unfortunately,
are the rules of „our‟ nature.”
“And the „director‟ refers to...?”
“I guess you already know the answer. I have to tell you, your answer is much
likely to be right.”

For a couple of minutes or so, the cousins just stood there and didn‟t make a
sound. It was Emily who finally broke the embarrassment: “what an unbelievable
day... How I wish it was all a dream!”
John didn‟t pay attention this time - he was now looking out of the open window,
where a gigantic bird was flying toward them. That is the most beautiful and bizarre
bird he has ever seen - all its feathers were flaming red and golden.
“A phoenix! I have never thought of seeing a real phoenix in my life!” Emily
shouted with great happiness, but very quickly her tone turned sad: “I guess you are
right, John. I was wrong. The phoenix is not real. It is nothing but that evil Jian
Kang‟s dirty trick.”
“And he should feel ashamed for what he has done to us,” agreed John.
The phoenix stopped at the window and dropped a letter there and disappears.
“Humph... Not again!” Emily said. Now it looked like she totally accepted the
fact that she had been living in someone‟s mind.
16
 John went and picked up the letter: “Should I read it?”
“I don‟t care. I guess there is very little I can do about the message from the
„God‟ anyways.”
John sighed in sorrow and unfolded the letter. Surprisingly, however, this letter
was different than the previous two.
The letter was written for them!

Dear Emily and John:

I‟m now writing this letter with guilty. I know at this point you guys already have
a clue about yourselves and the world you are living in. I also know that it has been a
difficult time for you guys to accept the truth - I mean, if someone came around and
told me the world I have been living in, every person that I have loved, every moment
I have enjoyed, my every thought and every move, and my every joy and every pain
was nothing but signal in someone else‟s brain, what would I think?
You are enraged by my selfish behaviors on you, my dear messengers, but please
believe me this is not a conspiracy or any personal. It‟s just the way it works. Your
world belongs to my imagination indeed, but it could also be put in this way: you guys
and I are the same existence - if this somehow makes you feel better. Now let me
explain: I believe a human, or any general existence, is a string of moves and
thoughts that occupies both space and time – the difference between a girl and an
apple tree might be only that the string of the former is way more active than that of
the latter. Furthermore, at every point of time, any of your actions could have effect
on some other action strings (by which I mean some other existence); similarly, your
action string could also be affected by others‟. This sounds fairly simple, but it helps
to make it easier to understand the following statement: „every existence is the same
one. It is the universe itself.‟ Try to imagine a desk on which there are hundreds of
poker-card-towers. The towers stay close to each other – in fact, at each layer all
cards are basically mixed up. Suppose there is one man who is only half of an inch tall
and he is walking right on the desk, through the free spaces between the towers. If you
asked this little man to tell you what he sees, he would probably say he sees different
17
towers of cards in front him. However, if you are standing by the desk and looking
down, you would just consider all the towers as one big mix of cards. Now if, say, the
towers represent different individuals in this world, what could we say about
ourselves? In our scale, we are different existences like the different towers; however,
in a way-larger scale, we are all really the same existence that occupies some space
and some time. The sentences above are fairly rough, but I do hope you can get the
idea: you are me, and I am you. Together, we share the spirit of the nature like
everyone else does.
P.S: Emily, I‟m not an evil monster as in your dream; in fact, I consider myself a
quite nice person.

Cheers.

Jian Kang
Apr, 15th, 2005

Silence is all what was left after John read the letter.
“Now I guess I have no other choices but to accept the fact.” Emily finally broke
the silence, “but hey, what if that Jian Kang is just a mere image created by the mind
of some existence beyond even him?”
“Nobody could debate you on that one, Emily, nobody. After all, we are all just
like water drops that leap from a river, where we come from and have to end our
journey. Then, the water drops dissolve in river, get mixed up, and jump again from
another place, at a different time, but repeat the same kind of story. Every drop of
water is different than another, and yet, all drops are eventually the same – they are
the river itself, the absolute existence that combines both space and time as a whole.”
Emily had no other choices other than to agree. She totally understood the
situation – nothing now was too strange to happen there as long as Jian Kang wished
– so when she saw the letters on the letter slowly faded and appeared again, she
18
grabbed the letter and read it aloud, without any uneasy feeling at all. This time it was
to Dr. Miller.

19
CHAPTER 4
The Deepest Fear inside You and Me
Guesses on Human Behaviors and Morality

Dear Dr. Miller:

I guess this would be the last letter in this paper. I‟m planning to divide the
content of this letter into two parts: the relations between John‟s discovery and the
concept of spacetime, and brief discussion on our morality as finishing up this paper.
Why don‟t we begin now?
Now John and Emily have already realized the truth of themselves and the
world they are living in. They have come up with a good metaphor to describe the
picture. I like John‟s metaphor since it reminds me an essential chapter in our lecture
notes – that of spacetime. Consider the river as the universe, and the
flying-water-drops are all the creatures in it. In micro scale, the flow of the river
represents the unstoppable flow of time. Standing far away on the shore, you can
never distinguish the difference between the water drops – as a matter of fact you
might not even notice the individual motion of every existence. In conclusion, it is safe
to say you consider the river as a whole existence, with space and time as different
dimensions to it. In terms of Non-Euclidean Geometry, this might also be part of the
concept of the spacetime.
Now think of it in another way: the world John and Emily are living in is no
more than a twenty-five-page-long term paper. As one proceeds to read the paper,
he/she could reveal the „true‟ existence of Emily and John, much like the way that the
cousins feel about their own. They think they have the freedom to decide things, but
the fact is, sadly, that the paper is already written and nobody is allowed to modify it
in any way. Emily and John are lucky because they did realize the truth about their
world, but how about the other people, if any, who just repeat their lives day by day,
without questioning the existence of their world? I somehow feel sorry whenever I

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think of them.
However, asking the same question to myself, what if we are no different than
Emily and John, except our „book‟ is much thicker, more well-written and more
complicated; what if, again, we are all just characters in another great „book‟ finished
long, long, long time ago, not to be modified or extended? Could our world come to
an end as we approach the last page of our book?
In my opinion, we, as self-considered master of this planet, have all asked the
same question to ourselves – it is a part of a nature of us. I guess many would argue
that they have never ever thought of this worthless question, but I would answer them
that, this question, with great fear brought by it, hides at a very dark corner in your
soul. The reason why you don‟t feel it is that your mind blocks it from you due to the
fear it might cause to you – this is a part of your nature, too. In spite of all this,
however, you still can experience it from real deep inside, for instance, when you have
nightmare where you are lost, murdered or disappeared for no reason. It is, I would
like to say, a distorted representation of the fear deep inside you, the doubt on your
own existence. Furthermore, believe it or not, I found this doubt to have a very close
relation on the morality and behaviors of us:
Because of question of whether or not we truly exist, there is something hidden,
but eternally burns deep inside our soul – a desire to prove by, actual behaviors, that
we exist indeed.

First, let‟s imagine one day you wake up, and you find you can‟t do anything on
anything around you - you try to brush your teeth but you can‟t hold the teeth brush;
you try to eat breakfast but you can‟t even move a piece of bread; you try to ask
people to help but you have absolutely no feedback as if you are invisible; the most
terrible thing is, you try to punch in your face to see if you are dreaming, but you
realize you can‟t even more your arms. In this situation, among millions of possible
thoughts flashing across your mind, I bet this sentence is what you would think of the
most: “I don‟t belong to this crazy world!” Yes, you may argue what you are about to
say in that case is probably: “I must be dreaming”; but this is just another way to say
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you don‟t belong there. In short, I think it‟s safe to say one wouldn‟t feel his/her
existence if he/she can‟t make any effect to any other thing; in other words, one of the
most important ways people experience their existence is through the interactions
with other beings. We try to make ourselves believe we exist by making effect on
something else and consider the effect as an extension of our existence, and therefore
feel happiness. Very often, without realizing it, we try to fulfill the proof from two
different angles: quantity and quality.
About quantity, there are tons of evidence out there: I believe every civilization in
the world has tales or stories about seeking for eternal life, which is very similar to
say “looking for a longer existence”; When a child is born, the young couple usually
feel happy because, as a matter of fact, they strongly feel their existence is greatly
extended on their child; when chatting with closed friends or lovers, people feel happy
because they see their thoughts are accepted and flowing in other‟s mind; when the
fans are applauding like nuts, a pop star feels happy since he easily experiences his
existence extended in his fans... In short, about any extension of our existence would
make us satisfied and courage to find another extension.
How about the quality approach? I think it‟s easy to start by a question: “why
are jokes funny?” Is it the plots that make us laugh? I don‟t see much interesting plot
in lots of jokes considered funny. In my opinion, the essential factor in a joke is the
part to make you feel that you are more superior than the ones in the joke. To clarify
this up, let‟s consider the following scenarios: two men lost their lives today; one man
died from cancer, while the other one stepped on a banana skin, fell down and lost his
life as the cost. I‟m telling you one of these two scenarios is from a comedy while the
other is from a tragedy, and asking you to guess which is from the comedy. Now, what
would be your first guess? I believe the most natural guess for us would be the
banana-skin-death is from a comedy.
But, why? Why is the banana-skin-death somehow funny comparing to the other
one? What is the real difference between them in terms of funniness?
My guess is, the reason why the latter is more „funny‟ to us is that people would
consider the dude who steps on the banana-skin simply stupid, or extremely out of
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luck, which makes us feel we are way better off, and therefore satisfied by our
better-existence. As a matter of fact, if you think of all the jokes you could remember,
you would find about 90% of them make you think you are way better than the poor
dudes in the jokes. Thus, jokes as global-scale evidences show that a big part of our
happiness is obtained by finding better existence of ourselves.
Well, Dr. Miller, if you are now reading this sentence, I would be more than
pleased by the fact that my paper didn‟t make you fall asleep. Now I‟d like to make a
final conclusion of this paper. As you see, the content of this paper is mostly the
discussion about discovering the „truth‟ of this world and ourselves, and the discovery
of the intersection of philosophy and Non-Euclidean geometry. There were many
well-known theories I brought from the great philosophers such as Plato, Descartes
and Floyd; but still, there are also many ideas that I came up with on my own.
Anyways, I do hope you enjoyed the time with Emily and John, and found some
of their little discoveries interesting.

Good Day!

Jian Kang
Apr. 17th, 2005

P.S: One year ago, at one night when I was sitting in a pizza shop, starring at the
mirror on the wall, a strange thought flashed across my mind: “what if the man in the
mirror is not myself?” At one moment I chilled and said to myself: “how is that
possible?” However, the more I thought of this question, the deeper I get trapped in it.
Then, finally, I decided to find a solution in philosophy. I feel a little embarrass to say,
but this was the start of my exploration in philosophy. Now, as finishing this paper,
I‟m actually fairly satisfied, and yet courage by the fact that no matter what indeed
the world is like, or the true existence of us, the important thing is I found my own
way to view the world. That is all what I need to stay happy and carry on, really.

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 Just at the moment when Emily finished reading the last line, the letter started to
burn in bright, cool flames. Emily held the letter, which soon became a fire ball.
John came close to his cousin and put his hand on the fire ball. He looked at
Emily and said: “what we are holding in our hand is the last letter, the signal of the
end of our world.”
Emily nodded: “I know... I wonder what‟s going to happen now?”
All of a sudden, light began to fade away. Darkness drew near and swallowed
everything they could see – everything except the fire ball in their hands.
It was all quite. John and Emily felt they were flying in a dark space. There was
nothing they could hear and nothing they could see. However, they knew the fireball
that‟s once grabbed so tightly in their hands was right beside them, but slowly
growing into a huge, huge object with great brightness and heat. It is the up-coming
sun.
“Now we are mere dusts near the sun. Our world shall be reborn,” the cousins
thought. “And then, a new story will begin.”

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