Between This and That

22 August 2023

By Frank Scoblete

The arrow being shot at a target is an interesting problem – which could, I guess, cause conniptions in many people. It does for me.

Many people ascribe this arrow situation to Archimedes, the ancient Italian philosopher, mathematician, and scientist from ancient Syracuse who postulated the following:

If you shoot an arrow at a target, that arrow has to travel a distance to get there. But it must go halfway to the target first but to get to that halfway point it must go half way to the halfway point as well. But to get to that point it must go halfway to it as well. To get there, it must get halfway there as well. To get there… (You get the idea, right?)

Or you could use the idea of traveling. To go from where you are right now to somewhere else, such as your favorite casino, you have to go half way to it, and, yes, then halfway to that and then halfway… By the end of me writing halfway, we have not moved at all. The entire universe would then be stagnant.

Of course, we know that the universe is not stagnant. We do all the half ways with no real difficulty (except maybe a traffic jam or someone walking in front of the target who gets nailed by the arrow).

You get the idea, you keep dividing the distance in half until to you get to such a small number that you can’t even really ascertain what that number looks like in the real world. Is that number really in the real world? Maybe not.

Except it really doesn’t matter in these examples because the logic of them doesn’t fit what our experience of reality entails and it certainly entails movement from here to there.

Okay, here is my problem. Emotionally, we have movement too. We go from one emotional state to another. That’s a kind of traveling right?

Do you remember the classic vaudeville comedy sketch where a man is locked in a room or prison cell with a truly maniacal nutcase? The nutcase is upset by something or other (I forget what) and he turns and says something to the effect that “slowly I turn, step by step” and his prison-mate or room “pal” is going to get blasted, maybe even killed.

In the above example, the nutcase went from not upset to murderously upset. That’s some travelling distance. Still, he had to make a movement from somewhat normal to totally out of his mind. At some point he was halfway to the finish line. He had emotional space to cross, perhaps “A” to “Z.” Still, this man had to go through stages of his emotional trip. The stages might be fast but they are there nevertheless.

There is always a “between” in emotional travel. Our nutcase above would go “step by step” as if he were traveling the emotional highway to some murderous destination. He starts out calm and goes from that to “oh, no” THAT.

Let me put this is the casino context. We all travel roads in our playing experience, some of which are not pleasant at all.

All the best in and out of the casinos!

Next week. How we emotionally travel in the casino.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books, libraries and bookstores.