Once you get to 2, you conjecture 3. Once you reach 3, you conjecture infinity.

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There is a reason Valve never made Half-Life 3 or Portal 3. There is a reason why once Pixar made Toy Story 3, the road to Toy Story 5 was probable rather than unlikely.

1 suggests unity: wholeness.

2 suggests duality: one cannot exist without the other.

3 suggests trinity, which can also be holy.

But once you get to 3, you really start to wonder, why not 4?

And once you get to 4, you wonder, why not 5?

Where does the slippery slope end? When does a small, privileged number give way to an infinity of countable numbers? To an uncountable infinity? To an infinity of sorts of infinities?

This is the topic we discuss in today’s short blog post.

The answers are different

I don’t think everyone answers this question the same way.

Sometimes the number you stop at is 7 (another prime number, like 2 or 3).

Sometimes the number you stop at is 12 (which has many factors).

Sometimes we stop at 10 (because we happen to have 10 fingers).

There isn’t a universal answer.

Sometimes even within a single religion, there isn’t one dominating idea of which number to stop at. In Christianity, there is one God. But there is Jesus, who is also God. The duality between God and his Son Jesus must be considered. But there also is the Holy Trinity, which includes God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. Typically, one stops there, but a curious child might ask, why isn’t there a holy “fourth being”? And the pastor or priest must supply a theologically based answer that a child can understand.

In the world of film, usually 1 or 3 is a good number. There are plenty of great trilogies. There are plenty of great single films. A duality of films is possible, but usually is derived by ignoring the bad third film of the trilogy.11I’m looking at you, Godfather Part III. A good example of a true duality (in the sense that both films are good) is Kill Bill Vol. I and Kill Bill Vol. II.

John Wick is a great example of a good film that could have stood on its own, but devolved into an endless slippery slope of commercially-driven derivative films. I don’t know if the plot improved, but I feel like the spirit of the first John Wick film was a bit betrayed by the later films. John Wick was just about a guy who happened to be a former hitman whose dog was killed and he just decided on vengeance. This stellar premise needed no further introduction and the “series” could have just ended there at one film. But I am sure other people, and perhaps I, one day, have and will enjoy the other films for what they are.

The power of 4 and more

I think 4 is a powerful number. Once you understand 3, and 4, it is easy to count to 5. After all, your thumb is just another finger. Your other hand is just another hand, and you are already at 10 there.

Why not dream of 11? Of 20? Of 100? Of bigger and bigger numbers?

Earth is just one planet. Why can’t there be another planet?

The Sun and its system is just one solar system. Why can’t there be infinitely many systems of stars?

Once you really learn to count, the possibilities are endless. I hope that this brief blog post has reminded some people of the initial joy they had growing up and learning basic mathematics.