There was once a time when Math didn’t exist.
It was a world without loss, suffering, or tricks.
There was a village located in the mountains of freedom. The old sage of the village was a man named Creativity. Villagers of the village would come to Creativity for all sorts of problem. They came to him for advice on a new painting they wanted to hang on their wall of their houses, some came to ask questions about the origin of life, some wanted to know the truth about stories. The village lived in peace and harmony with Creativity as their chief.
One day, there was a traveler who visited the village from a land far, far away. He too, was an old man with knowledge. When he came into the village, the people started crowding around him as it was their first time seeing and outsider come to their village. In fact, all this time the villagers thought that they were the only ones who existed in this world! His name, was Equation. When Equation came into town, he sought out Creativity to allow him to stay in the village as he was traveling around the world seeking knowledge from around the world.
Although Creativity allowed him to stay in the village, he warned his villagers not to have any conversation with Equation. The villagers all agreed to never talk to Equation, but curiosity got the better of them. As days past, people started to sneak into Equation’s room to ask about the knowledge he acquired while traveling around the world.
However, all Equation would tell them was that 1+1 was 2, 2×2 was 4, 2-1 would be 1, and that 4/2 was 2. It all sounded weird for the villagers because they grew in a land that math didn’t exist.
Word spread through quickly in the village. By the end of the week, everyone was talking about the words Equation had told them. They were so focused on interpreting the words of Equation that they stopped going to Creativity for any advice at all! It all seemed useless at first, but little by little the villagers started to notice. At first they noticed the difference of possessions between each family in the village. Then, they started to realize that they wanted more belongings, and that they would compare the number of wealth with other families in the village.
Among the villagers grew envy, and greed. They wanted more, they wanted to be the richest in the village. Soon, they started to trick each other for wealth. And by the time they knew that they were better off not knowing the concepts of mathematics, it was already too late for them to get it out of their head.
I used the concept of mathematics and the arts as to create a contrast between creativity and logical thinking. I have always wondered a world without mathematics mainly because I dreaded through math class in high school, but also it seemed to be an interesting how things would work in the world since they do not have the concept of math in their brain. It is difficult to embrace the idea of a world without mathematics, but at the same time I found joy in creating this story that I find interesting. Hope you guys enjoy it too!!
Works Cited
“About Us.” Canadian Art, canadianart.ca/about-the-foundation/.
https://www.math.ubc.ca/php/MathNet/courseinfo.php?session=2019W&t=outline&name=104:101
Singh, Ragav. “Making a Beautiful Landscape Painting of Village Phenomena.” Trybe, Trybe, trybe.one/making-a-beautiful-landscape-painting-of-village-phenomena/.
Hi Joseph,
I found that your story really grabbed my attention! This is likely because I often find my logical self is in conflict with my creative and emotional self. This assignment was a good example of that; I felt that my practicality made it hard for me to be creative and original.
Do you think you could have reversed your story by having Equation be the chief and introducing Creativity as the change that upset the balance of the village? Maybe Equation could have kept the members of the community in equilibrium, dividing up goods and resources evenly among the people. Do you think that having a system based purely on logic and mathematics could potentially be beneficial to the village because of its lack of bias? Perhaps creativity has the potential to create divisions of opinions. As well, it is often not evenly distributed within a group. Different people have different levels of creativity in various areas. Perhaps the arrival of Creativity could have created greed and envy.
I am curious to hear what you think!
Eva
Hi Eva!!
Reading your response about my story, it would have been possible to reverse my story so that creativity would be the one influencing the villagers!
I think both versions would be great, it hust that the difference of perspectives would impact how the readers would feel about it!! 🙂
Hello Joseph,
Thank you for a great story – many people saw greed as the seed of evil, this is nicely composed, and I enjoyed my read. Did you tell the story to listeners? I am curious to know what happened to your story when you had an audience? If anything?