#37: Embracing Hope (PART 1)

【Historic Turning Point - Writing】
The origin of our universe dates all the way back to roughly 13.8 billion years ago.
 
From that beginning of time itself, 9.2 billion years pass by before Sun and Earth are formed. On earth, it takes 0.8 billion years before seeing the first traces of primitive life, and another 3.8 billion years before our bipedal ancestor takes the historic first step.
 
Thence, mankind is born into the wilds some 5 million years ago.
 
The rigor of the wilderness and the beauty of Mother Nature. They’re like two sides of the same coin, but the wilds present us with the sobering reality that the weak are victims of the strong. They force upon us the inescapable reality that every animal sustains oneself by taking another life, the grievous limitation of life itself.
 
So that’s where mankind set sail for our journey. From there, we gradually puzzled together a society and eventually a civilization. We cultivated the land, grew fruits and vegetables, and formed a community by allocating tasks suited for one another. All of them wove together into a steady process of culture building.
 
The historic turning point dawned on mankind roughly 4.995 million years after its birth, or 5 thousand years ago from today. Suddenly, for one reason or another, humanity decided to start writing!
 
Writing turned out to be a total game changer and a revolutionary transformation for humanity. Perhaps, it was even beyond revolutionary because until then, the knowledge and wisdom were only passed on from person to person through direct conversations and teachings.
 
It’s especially true when we consider that only in the last 30 thousand years did life expectancy for humanity approach 30 years. Against 5 million years of its history, that’s like a brand-new trend for mankind.
 
Acquiring knowledge, squeezing out wisdom, trying them out in the real settings, polishing them up further, and then passing them on to the next generation. That’s a very tall order especially when a person’s lifespan is less than 30 years.
 
As such, only a limited amount of knowledge and wisdom was passed across generations in the pre-writing days. What’s more, mankind was severely restricted in mobility, so the knowledge and wisdom didn’t travel far – practically bound within walking distance.
 
So, just as with every other animal, each person essentially started out from scratch every time.
 
To better picture the magnitude of this limitation, imagine situations where we’re crafting a tool or mastering a certain concept. In the pre-writing days, we could only learn from the elders and friends what they’ve managed to figure out in their own short lifetime. At the most, the elders may have been able to share a limited amount of knowledge and wisdom that’s been verbally passed on for a few generations. But besides them, there’s virtually no other resource to tap into, and we’re on our own to figure things out from scratch.
 
Writing empowered humanity to move beyond such limitation. It allowed the knowledge and wisdom to accumulate and compound in great volume over multiple generations. And it opened up the possibility for those volumes of mastery to travel far.
 
Indeed, it is through writing that humanity is able to benefit from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom across time and geography.
 
To write and to read. Just as you’re now reading what’s written here. That made all the difference for mankind to chart an extraordinary trajectory in our evolution, unparalleled by the evolutionary paths of any other animal.

Read Theme: Perspective