![](https://schindlersword.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1-to-99.jpg)
Or rather what not to think.
Because if you think the “1% versus 99%” much talked about these days to divide us, is new, you’re mistaken.
“The 1% versus the 99%” is as old as words.
To know how old words are, try imagining the time between the birth of Earth and the year 2023 in terms of 100%, instead of in years.
It might take a minute or two, to talk from experience, because the time between the two is 4.65 billion years.
Alright?
Now add to the 4.65 billion years the fact words appeared 13,750 years ago.
Then you realize that the first 99.9997% of Earth-time was not only wordless, but that it continues wordless infinitely.
Put differently, if the 4.65 billion years were a 24-hour day, words would have appeared a mere 3/1000th of an Earth-time second before midnight, that is 3/1000th of an Earth-time second before the dawn of the new day we’re in.
To put that into context, 3/1000th of an Earth-time second before midnight, the age was stone, the Sahara green, Northern Europe under 1-mile-thick ice, and writing hadn’t been invented yet.
The story of words and of the inventions that preceded it
![](https://schindlersword.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Words-story-of-with-dates.png)
- “In the beginning is the word.” – Word-masters
- “There is magic in every beginning.” – Hermann Hesse
The invention of brains was magic.
500,000 years later, many among us agree the brain is magic, is usually how it works.
However, nearly the same number of word-users do NOT believe this same magic equally applies to the beginning of words invented 486,250 years after the brain, 13,750 years ago exactly.
This is a surprise because Hermann Hesse, albeit much later, wrote there is magic in every beginning, so every word-user can clearly see.
In the wordless world
In the wordless world, everything you have a word for doesn’t exist for self-evident reasons.
Whether that’s beginning, brain, or word doesn’t matter. After all, if you have a word for it, it’s a word.
You can bank on it.
Call it a dream, it doesn’t make any difference.
In the wordy world
In the wordy world of word-users, the early word-masters — the 1% — were the first to understand the magic of words, while the 99% — the early word-users — tended to mistake their master’s magic for evidence and treat it as such.
The same happens of course today with stories, but expecting words and stories to possess magic presupposes that the two have the organs required, which works for the 99%, but the word-masters are not eager to make that mistake.
Fact is, if the word-masters couldn’t tell a word from an organ, we wouldn’t be here today.
What difference has 13,750 years made?
The 1% are still the word-masters, and the word-users are still the other 99%.
Nothing has changed, except of course the word-masters’ names. Read on.
A brief story of word-mastery
- 13750 years ago
When words were new, fewer than 1% of the world’s nascent word-user population, the word-masters, could read and write. The word-masters were the world’s original version of us versus them, of the 1% that could read and write, versus the 99% that couldn’t. It follows that the 1% of word-masters were the first to realize that in the beginning of every word is the word. - 5,000 years ago
When writing was invented, the word-masters owned everything it took — the ink, the papyrus, the paper, the scribes, and the storytellers — to have their stories told in faraway places. The reward system at the time — gold and land the word-master said was his — made it affordable. But that is about gold, a different story entirely. - 585 years ago
When Gutenberg invented the printing press, still only fewer than 8% of Europe’s word-users could read (of which even fewer could write). It follows that the printing press was originally priced with the 1% — those who could read and write — in mind. For the word-users who needed to be told —the 99% — a printing press was out of reach. - 156 years ago
With the invention of the typewriter, everything changed because the typewriter transformed every word-user into a storyteller. Of course, the typewriters weren’t used just for storytelling, but also for the production of reference works such as encyclopedias, thesauruses, and dictionaries. - 34 years ago
Everything changed, again, when the world wide web also known as the internet was invented. The world wide web gobbles up, stores, and disseminates more words faster than anything invented for that purpose before. And because Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft — also known as Big Tech — realized this first, they are now the new word-masters, the new 1%, not because they have words, but because they have words about you.
Takeaway
All the truths add up to one big lie.
The author of The Origin of Humanity, I could be wrong.
However, of this you can be sure:
How the word-masters treat you is their power.
But how you respond is all up to you.