Ethnomathematics & The Meaning of Life?

So to set context, I am currently reading a book by Alex Bellos, a British journalist who graduated from Oxford with a degree in mathematics and philosophy. The book is called Here's Looking at Euclid, and for someone like me, who is not necessarily the most comfortable with numbers (due to some childhood trauma) but always wanted to be closer to math, this book is life changing. If you want a different perspective on how mathematics affects your life- I highly recommend it.

What is ethnomathematics? Ethnomathematics is the study of how different cultures approach math, and how math has been shaped by religion... an interesting concept for someone like me, where math is almost an absolute- something where there's not many shades of gray and where numbers mostly provide cold, hard data- who to fire, how much to spend, how much profit is coming in...etc. (Consultants use math a lot, but rarely think about it from an ethnomathematical sense.)

One of the first stories he tells is about a Pierre Pica, a linguist who now works at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France. For some years he had been studying the Munduruku tribe in the Amazon and had found that they view math in an interesting way. Unlike most of the developed world who see numbers in a linear way (above) where each dot say from 1 to 10 dots is evenly spaced, the Munduruku saw them in a logarithmic way. For people who have been used to seeing rulers, tape measurers and number lines since a young age, this linear way makes sense. For the Munduruku, a logarithmic view (seeing the distance/value between 1 and 2 to be larger than the distance/value between 2 and 3-see below) is a result of necessity. Bellos/Pica's theory is that, in a culture where survival (getting food to eat, assessing risk,etc.) is based on speed of assessment, logarithmic scales make more sense because they allow for faster estimation. (They might not need to know exactly how much fruit is in a tree, but they need to know if, faced with enemies, if there are more of them than Munduruku.)

I began to think, although this form of mathematical thinking is foreign to me, having grown up with number lines since kindergarten, I do still see some of this thinking in my every day life. I don't count this way, but when I reflect on my life, the perspective of my accomplishments seem to be getting progressively less important. Granted, this could be a relative concept, when you were young, you didn't have many accomplishments except for maybe graduating middle school, then high school and then going to college. Now your accomplishments are more frequent but less impactful- getting promotions, working on firm contribution, doing well on a given project... So in light of this new information, I encourage all of those other workaholics out there- those who put too much pressure on themselves with ridiculous expectations- RELAX.

It's normal that as you get older, even the accomplishments that seemed so important to you in high school seem insignificant now. But you've worked hard enough to give yourself a (small) pat on the back, and be proud of what you've done. I say this because, looking around me, my colleagues and friends are stressed out, tired, sleep deprived (no one can live on 4-6 hours of sleep a night for months at a time) and burnt out. They find it difficult to enjoy what small things they have accomplished because their brains are already working on the next problem/project/opportunity for growth. I say this with certainty because I am the same way. So, it's Sunday, let's take some time to take a breath, try to put our lives in perspective and enjoy the rest of the weekend.Without taking joy in the little things, it seems highly probable that we might begin to miss the big things. So whether you think the meaning of life comes in small or big milestones- don't miss them!