I once had to describe myself in school as an animal, and I picked a bird. Then I mentioned I am actually two kinds of birds. At times, I can be an eagle, soaring high in the sky, seeing how everything is organized from above. Often, though, I am just a pigeon with not much more than a bird brain.

I've had experiences that made me see that I am not the cleverest book on the shelf, and yet I do have a quality I sometimes find lacking in others: structural thinking. I have read that structural thinking is the highest discipline a person can be engaged in, hence the eagle. It comes to me quite naturally.

But I am also lazy, not wanting to investigate all ins and outs that specialists in their fields work with. I don't want to learn all the specific meanings regular words can have in woodworking, mathematics, scuba diving, the paint store, and for your car engine. That's my bird brain speaking.

Still, when push comes to shove, I investigate like a good detective and find things others aren't looking for. Politically, I look for the variations in governments and try to make sense of the differences that way; it is indeed possible at times to explain a socialeconomic problem and link it to the political structure and hierarchy of a nation.

It's my nature to come forward when a person or group of people are discussing matters and leave things out. I can't remain mute when I hear all the ABCs, but not the letter G, or when X is purposefully skipped for incorrect reasons.

I have known the way the universe works from the larger perspective since 1981. In 1992, I discovered how the prime numbers are organized, and it was fun because it was not because of the prime numbers themselves, but because of all the other numbers. Like pegs in a bowling ball game, the prime numbers are left standing after the ball got thrown.

In 2000, my book The Proof of Nothing got published, prime number information and all. Two years later, Agrawal also delivered the same to the world, but then in a more mathematical manner. I just showed how it worked. Still, he did not declare the real diamond in the work, so I knew he hadn't paid attention (reading my book or figuring it out by himself).

The true reason we are alive is because our original energy encountered the Big Nothing. That is not a 0, and that is not a 1. That is an original 1 that encountered a 0. I have been writing about that since.

The 0 is important in physics. It is important in politics. It is important in our lives. Unfortunately, when someone is given 0, they tend to walk away, not leaving much themselves but 0 in return. I accept that as a natural reaction, and I don't mind. Yet the educator in me wants to know if they got the essence why 0 is vitally important, or not.

We organize ourselves based on our information, on our perspectives, on our understanding of structures. So, when we do not know how we structured our own political system, then we may miss out on improving it for our society, our fellow humans, for our planet.

Structural thinking is very important, and the biggest step one can take in structural thinking is recognizing that 0 allows us to have two overall perspectives: 0-1, and 1-0. These are two eyes that provide depth when both are recognized. Many folks have just one overall structure in mind, and that is a shame because it is easy to show that their perspective.

My hero is Gödel. He showed how important structural thinking is. He is still under-appreciated in scientific circles. I hope that will change.