Schindlersword

the origin of humanity

What if I told you that “1%/99%” is older than writing? (would you be surprised?)

By In history, words

1%/99% older than writing
The story of words

In the wordless world

In the wordless world, wealth and power don’t exist for self-evident reasons.

In the wordy world

In the wordy world, the fact that wealth and power are words can be denied only by confirming it.

And in the wordy world, many word-users want you to believe that 1/99 — also known as the 1% vs. the 99% — describes the unequal distribution of wealth and power among the world’s population of word-users. Not only that, you’re also to know exactly which percentage you belong to every step of the way.

Fact is, where power is, there are words, and where words are, there is power.

Power tends to organize never in the shape of a glass of water, where the volume is evenly distributed, but always in the shape of a pyramid, where the 1% sits invariably on top.

Of course, words are powerless. Expecting words to have power presupposes they have the organs required, which they don’t for self-evident reasons.

The power, if any, is in the word-user.

  • Words first showed up on Earth 13750 years ago when the age was stone, the Sahara green, Northern Europe under 1-mile-thick ice, and writing hadn’t been invented yet.
  • The powerful 1% word-users, as opposed to the 99%, understood from the beginning that the word was a new beginning.
  • They understood that stored words would later allow for storytelling, which explains the powerful have been the 1% from the start, but also why the planet’s first storytellers were the rock stars of their day.
  • For the first 8750 years, words were spoken only, but when 5000 years ago writing was invented,  the 1% possessed the wealth and power to own the ink, papyrus, paper, scribes, seals, as well as the storytellers to have their stories told all over the world.
  • The reward system of the 1% at the time — get paid in gold, land, and titles the chief said was his — made it affordable. But that is about chiefs, a different story entirely.
  • When 585 years ago the printing press was invented, it was also priced with the 1% in mind.
  • 99% of the world’s word-users couldn’t afford a printing press in their wildest dreams.
  • Everything changed 156 years ago when the typewriter was invented.
  • The typewriter transformed everybody able to afford a typewriter into a storyteller overnight. Of course, this reshuffled 1% didn’t use the typewriter for storytelling only. They also used it to create reference works such as thesauruses, encyclopedias and dictionaries.
  • The invention 33 years ago of the world-wide-web — now known as the internet and social media — as changed everything, including the 1%, again.
  • The internet gobbles up, stores, and disseminates more words faster than anything invented for that purpose before, and by doing so spelled the death of “I don’t know.”
  • The newest 1% — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, also known as Big Tech — are wealthy and powerful not because they know everything about words, but because they know everything about you.

Powerful conclusion

How the 1% treat you is their power.

But how you respond is all up to you.

PS.

The utmost a word can do is co-respond the best it can to what you’re about to say, however, make no mistake about it, the one responding will forever be you.