The advent of agriculture is a definite turning point for humanity, but it was writing that allowed us to stockpile a resource even more valuable than grain and livestock — information.
In ancient Mesopotamia, as agriculture allowed work to become more specialized, people needed a way to record of transactions and keep track of debts. Clay tokens led to markings on clay token envelops before the tokens were finally abstracted into pure markings without the physical reference — writing! Similar systems developed independently in China and Mesoamerica, and out of these grew the codes that we cipher and decipher daily. Today, our complex and flexible systems of written language allow us to record everything from warehouse inventories to intangible emotional experiences.
I love writing
It helps me think. It allows me to record and sort through my thoughts. Once they are down on paper, I can stop thinking them, repeating them, forgetting them and recalling them at the wrong time. For me, the act of writing and the act of thinking are inseparable.
Libraries are like huge external hard drives. Scratch paper is our random access memory.
Writing allows our reasoning powers to surpass the physical limitations of the brain. No matter how smart you are, you can’t recall every detail at once. I have a hard time keeping track of even a few variable at a time. Why force your brain to jump back and forth — something it’s been proven to be bad at? Just write it down.
List making serves to disentangle my thoughts. It lets me store plans and ideas externally with the added benefit of quicker and more accurate recall. In this way, scratch paper becomes an extension of my short term memory.
Without a way to record ideas and events in a tangible medium, we would be bound by the limits of our human brain — our fallible memory system, our own unreliable narrator. Writing is stable.
Until it’s not
This is the immense problem of the archive. The fragility of the human archive opens the door to cultural amnesia. Why has it taken us so long to remember how the pyramids were built — such a monumental feat in the history of humanity? The records were lost, and we forgot how to read them.
Thought builds on thought
Written records enable progress as a species and as individuals. No one can exist in a vacuum. Writing connects us. It’s how we remember. It’s how we think beyond the limitations of our human brain. Writing is a tool. And when you are not inhibited by the great legacy of Writing, you can embrace the common and unavoidable act of writing.
And of thinking.
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