Well. Quite an interesting story, from a seemingly lonely and lethargic fellow, but nonetheless a highly conscientious thinker. Let us begin analyzing this story by commenting on some of A. Ligned's philosophical dilemmas, which we would not initially consider problems because of our dimensional superiority. Firstly, we acknowledge that A. Ligned is a one-dimensional line segment. He claims to observe himself "being more" and "being less", a certain intuition he has about his substance. Now, what you know, looking down on him from a higher dimension, is that his "being more" and "being less" is nothing but the displacement of at least one of his endpoints in a direction away from the other.

He speaks philosophically of his endpoints, that they have "created" him. At the moment of his conception, it is true that his endpoints and his very being all converged in one spot of non-dimensionality. From this point on, his life took form. He notices a correlation between the communicability of his endpoint friends and origins, and the amount of substance he has, but does not have a feasible explanation for this correlation. From his vantage point, he cannot realize as you and I can that the communicability of his endpoints is inversely related to his length, and that his length is responsible for his notion of substance, as it provides him with more points.

But here I would like to make a comment which may put a dent in your hubris: our explanation of correlation comes from a more superior source, however does does it really give us a better explanation? While we may be able to "visualize" the correlation and A. Ligned can not, do we have any more insight into its meaning? In other words, while we have access to the visual idea of length, does this explain the connection any better? I would like you to keep this idea in mind as you continue to venture through the dimensions - it shows us that by climbing the dimensional ladder we may gain relatively better insight into the nature of things, but the notion of us gaining absolute knowledge is doubtful.

Now, we see that A.Ligned's life was, despite the geometrical restraints of his world, quite similar to ours in that there was a great deal of philosophical rumination and a lot of things left unanswered, even by the end of his life. However, from the perspective of a higher dimension, his life could almost be considered an absurdity! For what if I were to tell you 3 dimensional folk that the life of A. Ligned was nothing more than a disc passing through a line defined by a certain equation (which I will not share with you so as to protect his anonymity).

As this disc was passed through this line, it initially created a point on it. This was what A. Ligned referred to as his preconscious moment where his endpoints and his "embryo", shall we say, converged. Then, as the disc passed through the line it began to occupy more of the uni-dimensional territory, hence his notion of gaining more substance. The line formed by this passing continually enlarged as a function of the circle's circumference and the speed at which it was being passed through. What A. Ligned considered a climactic point in his life was merely the the coincidence of the disc's diameter and the line. The decline from that point on was just the disc continuing to pass through the line until it would reach a point, and then disappear. Indeed, A. Ligned's intuition served him correctly because he had predicted this quite well!

Soon after this documentation was taken, A.Ligned returned to his preconscious state, converging into a non-dimensional point together with his endpoints. Ultimately, whatever pride A. Ligned felt he should have because of his dimensional superiority proved faulty with time, and I should think this an excellent lesson for you 3 dimensional citizens.

 

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