This is going to be kind of an odd ball post. I was in Biology class, taking notes with a new pen. I had purchased the pen a few days before but I hadn't, due to circumstance, had the opportunity to really write with it. I was in Biology, finding myself writing sentence after sentence about biodiversity in Madagascar, and I found that I really like this pen. It's a black pen, with liquid ink. It was two dollars. Its a very nice pen.
And as I was enjoying, consciously, the feel of smooth, dramatic black ink against white, smooth paper, I realized: I should be more amazed at the fact that that gorgeous blank ink against white paper and blue lines means something. Symbols, random symbols. But as I write them with small, exact movements with a pen, it becomes language. Coherent language that anyone I know can see and understand. The immediate transfer of knowledge, a power I seem to wield easily and without provocation in most cases, I'm sure.
We mark civilization by its written language or lack thereof. We know things about the past peoples of this world that ruins of buildings could never show us. Why and how do we know them? We've been blessed with their writings; we've been blessed with concrete, tangible proof of everything they knew and exchanged. We know their legends and songs, their history and their stories, their religions and their sciences. All of this thru the concrete, tangible and thoroughly amazing transfer of knowledge.
Even now, as I type, randomly shaped symbols come up upon the screen in a way all of you can comprehend. And isn't that remarkable?
Isn't it truly amazing?
yes. yes it is....
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