What would life be like without the Written Language? Other than those alive before Ancient Mesopotamia, nobody knows. Even most foreign countries have some form of written language they use to communicate. We have lived all our lives with words and numbers and having to write. Typing this right now, makes me fond of the words and letters that have made their way into our everyday lives. Without Written Language would you be reading this now? Most likely not, unless you are in some kind of multiverse and this somehow got to you. How would our lives change without being able to read and write? Without written language’s existence would we be able to communicate to different people not in our country. Without traveling for days, months, or even years, you wouldn’t even know of their existence and them, yours. You wouldn’t know of my existence unless somehow I blew up the world, then that would be the last thing you hear. 

    Over the hundreds of years of human existence, we have learned to read, write, speak, draw, yea, but one question remains, why? To tell stories and tell of things happening, so eventually, those alive years after us, know about their history or heritage. Oral storytelling, or telling a story by word of mouth, has been around for centuries. Though it has been in our nature for years and will be for years to come, it isn’t that reliable. In the past, we have all experienced being told something that has been twisted and curved to sound sweeter than it is. We have all been told that our drawing of a butterfly hanging on the fridge was a masterpiece, but when you look at it now, it just seems to be a knot of squiggly lines, that looks nothing like a butterfly. With writing, it can be the same, but nowadays we have people fact-check and revise our writing, so it is completely true. I thought about this recently and a topic just can’t seem to let my mind go. Writing has been around for centuries and without it what would life be as a whole? We don’t think about this all the time, and no one that has thought about it hasn’t come to a perfectly rounded conclusion, and if they have they are obviously keeping it to themselves. Greedy. My thought about this is that without writing, we would have eventually become disconnected nations with little to no information about each other. That would have solved previous conflicts that have led us to World War 1 and 2, but would that have helped us unite against Global Warming, or collectively decide that racism was wrong? Probably not, unless somebody like Marco Polo spread the word. 

    Thanks to the early forms of written language, or cuneiform, in Ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), and Johannes Gutenberg’s Printing Press during the very beginning of The Renaissance, we now have hundreds of thousands of Languages and Written Languages to choose from, I myself am learning french. Written Language with the combination of the Printing Press, we have been able to learn and discover things about our history as a joined planet. We have been ablet to read about the fascinating ways that our world has changed within the span of mere centuries. The boom of the Renaissance led us to the most beautiful paintings that we have ever laid our eyes on, and without the Printing Press would you have been able to see it? No, you wouldn’t have. It would be lost in Italy and you would have to take a boat and walk hundreds of miles to even have a glimpse of the beauty of the Mona Lisa. 

    Without the aforementioned inventions, we would have not passed down knowledge from generation to generation, we would have to write things over and over and get hand cramps every hour, we would have never heard the amazing tales of the Golden Trio (Ron, Harry, and Hermione), we wouldn’t be able to send letters to loved ones, we would not be able to print and receive wedding invites, we wouldn’t be able to see the recreation of the Mona Lisa, we wouldn’t have heard of the terror caused in Europe during WW2, or heck even makes fun of Hitler for being a failed artist. I can’t even imagine, nor fathom, a world without Written Language or the Printing Press. If you can you probably can’t read this so why are you looking at it? Without Written Language or the Printing Press, the world would be so divided and alone, we wouldn’t feel that sort of unity that we feel today when we cheer on one another in the Japan Olympics or be able to worship Danny Devito in unison. Heck, would we be able to jam to the amazing voice of the Weeknd at the Super Bowl? No, not at all. 

    We would be a divided world, people in New York wouldn’t be able to make fun of those of us in the south, I want to live in New York, truly. We wouldn’t have a Constituion or a Declaration of Independence or the Federalist Papers or the 95 thesis or the Mona Lisa. We would have sat in our seats watching the world pass by with out any knowledge of our past other that meaningless stories, that eventually would loose their spark. I think the world would eventually fall apart without the invention of of the Written Language or the Printing Press, thank you Johannes. We would have left the world with ruins after our existence that was sadly wiped out by Murder Hornets or chickens. We would simply fall into a place where we could not return, just as fast as the Permian or Cretaceous extinction, where the animals could not adapt and overcome the changes we face everyday. 

    Everyday a child is being taught the wonders of how the whale come from a giant dinosaur and oddly relates to birds or being taught the triumphant achievements ot George Washington against the tyranny of the English monarchy, or a teenager having to finish a thirty page homework assignment about geometric transformations on a graph. I probably wouldn’t have fallen in love with Hidden Figures, both the book and the movie.  I wouldn’t have obsessed over Lin Manual-Miranda and Hamilton, yes, you heard me, 🎵My name is Alexander Hamilton🎵.  I love that musical. Anyways, you probably wouldn’t debate with your boss about Die Hard being a Christmas movie, with out the beautiful invention of words. If you hadn’t written that email to you professor about an extension on an assignment you waited until tonight to do, because you have been procrastinating and should get back to your work! 

    To, sadly, conclude my rant, I want you to think, and really think hard about the outcome of a world in which you haven’t read this amazing article. I believe that the world with out words is barren and empty and lifeless. Alone and divided. We should have a national word day, but I don’t think that’s real. Thank you for listening to my ted talk. Evidently my words will not be read by the universe with out written words.