Addition is easy

Reflecting on the “pruning down” that I mentioned in my most recent Now page, yes it’s turning into another Drop100 alright. This time I won’t be publishing each project that I’m dropping/doing over the rest of the month, but it’s a hundred of them. And it’s got me thinking.

Addition is easy.
Subtraction is hard.
Multiplication is predictable.
Division is impossible.
Exponents are invisible.

What do I mean by this?

Addition is easy

It is simple and easy to add more to what is
More stuff, more status, more complication
Sometimes it helps, but mostly it doesn’t

Subtraction is hard

It is just as simple but much harder to remove what does not belong
Fewer things, fewer choices, fewer places for things to break
Sometimes it hurts, but mostly it doesn’t

Multiplication is predictable

Human logic works on multiplication
Much of it based in the edict “go forth and multiply”
Because we can see it clearly, we see everything this way

Division is impossible

It’s pleasing to think that we can divide what there is amongst us
But we have no mechanism to agree on how that happens
And millennia of evolution spent strengthening our ability to disagree

Exponents are invisible

The universe’s logic is logarithmic and old as time
But we can’t see it, as we are of it
We know of the waves, but mistake them for the water in which we swim