the origin of humanity
You know it’s a word:
Everything you know is a word.
Side note:
The internet, your smartphone, and AI don’t know when it’s a word because they are net, phone, and artificial.
A 13,750-year-old sales trick continues to work as we speak, so you might of course want to know what it is and what we’re talking about.
Well, first things first, a trick is intended to deceive.
As you’d expect from a trick that has deceived without fail for the past 13,750 years — which is when the words got invented — is that it must have deceived as many word-users back when the age was stone, the Sahara green, and Northern Europe was under 1-mile-thick ice, as it continues to deceive now, 13,750 years later.
If you think that’s the 13,750-year-old sales trick this post is about, you’re spot on.
It’s as if time has left no trace on the workings of this nearly 14,000-year-old sales trick.
Sales implies that the trick is based on words. Needless to say, but for the purpose of this post I say it anyway, sales is a word, and so is trick.
In the wordless world, sales and trick don’t exist for obvious reasons. But in the wordy world, everything is different.
In case you haven’t read all my articles published since July 10, 2023, let me remind you that there exist two types of citizens on planet Earth, the word-masters and the word-users.
The word-masters are word-users that have known in the beginning is the word since the beginning of words.
The word-users do as told by the word-masters.
There’s nothing new about the word-masters, the minority, and the word-users, the majority. On the contrary, the relationship between masters and users has remained unchanged for thousands of years, and now is no different.
The word-masters and the word-users alike, that is all of us, know from personal experience that we depend on context and contrast to stay alive.
Should we lose our ability to be in charge of our own context and contrast, that means we simply surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from it. When this happens, you’ll be in trouble in the blink of an eye or by the end of the day, whichever comes first.
This we’ve known long before Maslow wrote it down for everybody to see, because, let’s face it, we’re all animals with words — though we love to pretend otherwise — so we know what we know with or without words learned at school.
After all, the 100% cells that we’re made of are wordless, too, and each cell knows much more than we’ll ever know.
If you’re not in charge of your own context and contrast, then somebody else will be more than happy to take charge for you.
That somebody will likely be evil word-masters bent on taking advantage of this natural survival skill by rigging the setup in their favor.
When you surrender your senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from it, you have no rights left, and you don’t compare as you had initially intended, apples to apples, but you now end up comparing apples to oranges, or you can even be manipulated to believe an apple is an orange.
There are many ways to do this.
The challenge is knowing who is in control of the context and the contrast.
Make sure it’s you.
You can’t win with a losing hand.
As you’d expect, your lesson begins with the first step.
Step number one is knowing that the word-masters have known in the beginning is the word since the beginning.
You don’t need to be a word-master to know what that means.
But you must know how it all began.
It all began with the invention of words, hence the saying “In the beginning is the word”.
Unless you’ve lived in a cave on a distant planet until today, I think you’ve likely heard about or seen in the beginning is the word in writing.
Above marked in red, nothing that you now have a word for exists in the wordless world Before Words.
Equally marked in red, everything you now have a word for exists in the wordy world After Words because in the beginning is the word.
That’s how humanity and everything you have a word for began.
A word couldn’t be anything else if it tried, including you.
Therefore, without further ado, let’s move on to step 2.
The story of words isn’t told because of Step 1.
If the story of words were told, it would be the death of the world’s longest-lasting lies.
- “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” – Word-masters
In the beginning is the word.
God is no exception.
It couldn’t be anything else if it tried.
Words were invented 13,750 years ago.
Writing was invented 5,000 years ago.
Nobody knows what word was spoken in the 8,750 years between the invention of words and the invention of writing.
We know that during the word’s first 8,750 years, they were spoken only, meaning from whence the words had come, tither they returned again.
We don’t know where that was or could have been.
If the story of words were told, it’d be the end of the organizations built on the world’s most successful lies.
They couldn’t continue to tell them in peace.
Imagine that.
Now you know why the story of words isn’t told.
“Strange times are these in when old and young are taught falsehoods in school.” – Plato
Whether a lie happened or not doesn’t matter. All that matters it’s believed.
Why is it hard to gain a fresh perspective?
I think it has got to do — are you ready for this? — with professional golf teachers.
I’m told the hardest part for a professional golf teacher isn’t helping adult golfers develop a picture-book swing. The hardest part is getting adult golfers to stop using a bad one.
The same is true for professional word teachers.
The hardest part isn’t helping adult word-users gain a fresh perspective. The hardest part for a professional word teacher is getting adult word-users to change how to look at words.
When word-users change how they look at words, their worlds change.
You can bet your life on it.
Talk about a fresh perspective.
Part of a fresh perspective is seeing, maybe for the first time, that the invention of words divided the word-users’ world into the wordless and the wordy.
Maybe also for the first time, it is seeing that the words and the word-users follow what preceded them since the birth of the planet 4.65 billion years ago, including the inventions of the eyes and the brains half a billion years before the invention of words.
Put differently, there’s no question about it, the words and word-users are part and parcel of evolution.
Without words (in the wordless world), there is no evolution.
Certainly for the first time, the final part of a fresh perspective is seeing that “Animal with words” appears under both the “WORDLESS” and the “WORDY” worlds at the same time.
That’s due to the fact that words don’t matter.
In that way, words defy our understanding of how evolution works.
As depicted above, the wordless include not only the fire, air, earth, and water, but also everything invented by those 4 in the 4.65 billion years since they created the Earth.
In other words, the wordless include what the word-users name nature.
“To see, we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.” – Claude Monet
The wordy include the word-users, that is the animals with words (you and me), and the machines.
Every word-user is unique like everybody else.
Therefore, it goes without saying but for the purpose of a fresh perspective I say it anyway, each word-user has their own truth(s).
In other words, to each their own.
The machines are excepted because everybody knows that the machines operate on programs and that the difference, if any, is not in the programmed machines, but in who is using them.
If it were different, all word-users would change how they look at words at the same time, all their worlds would change in the blink of an eye, and we’d gain the first fresh perspective since the beginning of words before the end of the day.
And here’s how to make this wishful thinking come true:
Don’t think twice in the beginning is the word.
Just think it once and for all instead.
Done.
If you ever want a fresh perspective again, but don’t know how, it’s simple to do.
Change how you look at words.
The strange question I often get asked is “Why is the word not what my smart phone says?”
In a world of complicated — an English-pronounced Latin word — simple is like one hand clapping, hard to be heard, or if you prefer, like a bird without feathers, hard to take to the sky.
Word and words are good cases in point.
Simple is a word that couldn’t be anything else if it tried. Naturally, so is complicated.
The difference between the two is that simple is work while complicated happens.
There are many ways to simple.
You can read simple quotes worth reading twice.
And there’s “Last Train to Simple (the crazy method to love life)”.
Long story short, there are two answers, simple and complicated.
The simple answer: Because your smartphone depends on the internet.
For the complicated: Ask the internet.
Actually, you don’t have to. I’ve done the hard work for you.
“Gobbles up, stores, and disseminates more words faster than anything invented for that purpose before.” – Beat Schindler
Because all the internet knows about words is what it’s been told by the internet’s inventors who learned about words at school.
What’s wrong with that is that school doesn’t teach words and doesn’t tell the story of words. “School doesn’t teach” means school doesn’t teach words — what words are, what words do, and what words have — but that’s about school, a different story entirely…
…that will be covered in separate post down the line.
Back to smart.
Since the invention of the internet, things have changed.
Water has gone under the bridge and other stuff too.
The mothers and fathers of the internet are dead or old now.
They’ve been replaced by 6-year-olds, or by adults impersonating 6-year-olds, that are now telling the internet what they’ve learned at schools and universities about words.
If you want to know what that is, you’ll find it at the end of this post.
Because words — what words are, what words do, and what words have — are explained in The Origin of Humanity.
Of course, you’ll find The Origin of Humanity on the internet, here, at Amazon, and wherever worthy books are sold, but that’s not enough.
To understand words, and the origin of humanity, you must read it.
The Origin of Humanity is radically different from what your smartphone says. It might shock or offend for other reasons as well.
If the above reminds you of René Magritte’s painting “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”, there is nothing I can do about it except confirm that’s how the cards are dealt.
That’s what smart is all about.
There is more to it, but knowing words — what words are, do, and have — takes time.
Then it takes additional time to know you — what you are, what you do, and what you have.
All I can say is let yourself be surprised.
Better yet, surprise yourself.
“Surprise is the essence of humor, and nothing is more surprising than truth.” – Bill Watterson
The surprise will be worth it in the end because these two — word and you — are all it takes for the limits of your world to metamorphose into limitless opportunities forever and a day.
Join my waitlist to ensure you’ll be the first to be notified when my “Limitless Opportunities” course starts later this year, by the time the harvest moon rises again, give or take a few.
“A word is a speech sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or a combination of morphemes.”
“A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term “word” are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations. The concept of “word” is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own. Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation. In English and many other languages, the morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one root (such as “rock”, “god”, “type”, “writ”, “can”, “not”) and possibly some affixes (“-s”, “un-“, “-ly”, “-ness”). Words with more than one root (“[type][writ]er”, “[cow][boy]s”, “[tele][graph]ically”) are called compound words. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as phrases (“a red rock”, “put up with”), clauses (“I threw a rock”), and sentences (“I threw a rock, but missed”). In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a “word” may be learned as part of learning the writing system. This is the case for the English language, and for most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient Latin or Greek alphabets. In English orthography, the letter sequences “rock”, “god”, “write”, “with”, “the”, and “not” are considered to be single-morpheme words, whereas “rocks”, “ungodliness”, “typewriter”, and “cannot” are words composed of two or more morphemes (“rock”+”s”, “un”+”god”+”li”+”ness”, “type”+”writ”+”er”, and “can”+”not”).
“Word may refer to any of the following: 1. When referring to a word processor, Word is short for Microsoft Word. 2. In general, a word is a single element of verbal communication with a unique meaning or use. For example, this sentence contains seven words. The English language contains several hundred thousand different words and Computer Hope lists over 15,000 computer-related words in its computer dictionary. Word classes or parts of speech are categories of English words that help you construct good sentences. These categories are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, determiner, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. In computing, a word is a single unit of measurement that is assumed to be a 16-bits in length value. However, it can be any set value, common word size values included: 16, 18, 24, 32, 36, 40, 48, and 64.”
Click on Word Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster to see if you can believe Merriam-Webster’s take on words.
Merriam-Webster also wants you to believe that “a real word is when the word word has a wide range of meanings and uses in English. Yet one of the most often looked for pieces of information regarding word is not something that would be found in its definition. Instead, it is some variant of the question, What makes a word a real word? One of the most prolific areas of change and variation in English is vocabulary; new words are constantly being coined to name or describe new inventions or innovations, or to better identify aspects of our rapidly changing world. Constraints of time, money, and staff would make it impossible for any dictionary, no matter how large, to capture a fully comprehensive account of all the words in the language. And even if such a leviathan reference was somehow fashioned, the dictionary would be obsolete the instant it was published as speakers and writers continued generating new terms to meet their constantly changing needs. Most general English dictionaries are designed to include only those words that meet certain criteria of usage across wide areas and over extended periods of time (for more details about how words are chosen for dictionary entry, read “How does a word get into a Merriam-Webster dictionary?” in our FAQ). As a result, they may omit words that are still in the process of becoming established, those that are too highly specialized, or those that are so informal that they are rarely documented in professionally edited writing. But the words left out are as real as those that gain entry; the former simply haven’t met the criteria for dictionary entry–at least not yet (newer ones may ultimately gain admission to the dictionary’s pages if they gain sufficient use). However, in preparing your own writings, it is worth remembering that the dictionary encompasses the most widely used terms in English. Words that are left out may have usage limited to specific, isolated, or informal contexts, so they should be used carefully.
“Word is a single unit of language that means something and can be spoken or written.”
If the above could talk, what would they tell us?
We’ll never know because they won’t.
That’s the 1 (one) way I increased my knowledge by 1000%.
Let me share with you how it came about, so you can do it too.
Words do not describe the world.
They describe how we see it.
To know what I’m talking about. For just a minute:
Imagine traveling by train at your own chosen speed.
The landscapes don’t unfold.
They don’t need to because they’ve been there all along.
But you discover them and you give them words.
As the train departs slowly, you realize, slowly at first, that in the beginning is the word.
That’s when you realize the unfolding is you, that’s how beliefs are formed, but also that it’s safe to relax for it’s only a train of thought.
“To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.” – Claude Monet
Call it a dream, it doesn’t change anything.
Because you’ve imagined traveling by train at your own chosen speed, you’re halfway there already.
For the rest of the journey, I’ll teach you about words — the whole shebang, what words are, what words do, what words have, and what you are, what you do, and what you have — which is all it takes, words and you, for the limits of your world to morph into limitless opportunities forever and a day.
Join my waitlist to ensure you’ll be the first to be notified when my “Limitless Opportunities” course starts later this year when the harvest moon rises anew, give or take a few.
Understand words is not a walk in the park.
I should know for I stumbled upon words back in 2016.
7 years and 10,000 hours of writing about words later, I’m still only just getting started.
If you’re anything like me, you must not only discover but then also accept that there is a difference between Before Words and After Words.
Next, you work hard to understand the difference between word and words.
If you’re anything like me one more time, the hardest part by a country mile is accepting that…
And if that weren’t enough, you must also deal with wordusers telling you without fail that trying to understand words is hopeless and forlorn.
I did it anyway.
But that’s not all.
I also wrote a book — in English — that will help you understand words beyond the shadow of a doubt.
As a special preview, the book’s introduction reads like this:
THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY, WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT, investigates and answers what everybody wants to know.
Origin can be denied only by confirming it, a word. The same applies to the beginning and to humanity.
Before words, words didn’t exist for self-evident reasons. After words, the only question on the table is when did words, the beginning, and humanity happen?
Have words been with us forever, or have they arrived only when mother Earth gave birth to herself 4.65 billion years ago? Or did the words appear 542 million years ago when the eyes appeared, or maybe 42 million years later, when the invention of the eyes was followed by the invention of the brain? Or did words happen perhaps only 300 million years ago when animals of the homo type first showed up? Could it have been on a Tuesday 6026 years ago when nothing happened?
To keep you from guessing, the first (spoken-only) words are estimated to have appeared between 9500 and 18000 years ago. When exactly doesn’t matter.
The 13750 years ago used in THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT) is the average between the low and the high estimates.
13750 years ago, the age was stone, the Sahara green, Northern Europe under 1-mile-thick ice, and writing hadn’t been invented yet.
Please feel free to estimate the exact date yourself. After all, that’s what words are for.
Much water has gone under the bridge since, with much other stuff too, some good and some bad.
The wordless remain as wordless as ever, but the wordy have climbed to the top of the food chain second to none. The self-declared crown of evolution, ready for breakfast on Mars, and with our sense of humor we can look at what has changed — the glorious, the fantastic, the absurd, and the non-sensical — and laugh about it, not sure if that’s scary or funny or how it benefits us.
Only one thing is certain beyond the shadow of a doubt. Without our sense of humor, we’d all go insane. If we haven’t already.
Everybody knows that nothing good will ever come from fighting the old. It takes a fresh perspective that makes the old obsolete.
For this and other reasons as well, THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT) invites you to look at words as an alien might.
As you read my book, new landscapes will unfold that everybody knows have been there all along.
But as you will notice, the unfolding is you.
Of course, my book can offend for other reasons as well.
I wanted to write a book that gives readers hope. I believe that’s why you are here, and if we begin with what we agree on, it’s easier to understand what THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT) is about.
We probably haven’t had the pleasure to meet in person yet, so let me briefly introduce myself to you.
My name is Beat Schindler. That I’m passionate about the origin of humanity is new even to me.
In my younger years, I used to believe the stories told to me by storytellers typically stronger and taller than me.
I believed not only that the world had been created, but also that I’m part of a family, community, nation, people, humanity, and brotherhood of man. On top of that, I believed I was born human and, therefore, that I’m separate from nature.
I’m not saying I was convinced, but over time I got used to it.
When I was older, in 2016, it suddenly occurred to me that humanity could be a word.
Six years and many doubters later, it turns out that humanity is indeed what can be denied only by confirming it.
Now I’m driven by what I feel and no longer see the point in tarting it up.
I’m passionate about the origin of humanity as well as about the origin of words, because the two events are identical.
If it wasn’t for words, humanity wouldn’t exist.
I no longer believe anything is separate from nature. Everything is part of the origin, including us, the word-users.
I reside in a country where writing about the origin doesn’t get me silenced, imprisoned, or cost me my life.
Everybody wished that the governments all over the world loved their children, too, but everybody also knows the state the world is in.
I hear you, what in the world have words got to do with the origin of humanity?
All kinds of things are being said about words, depending on who is saying them, and what to believe is a question of character and personal preference, to each their own.
There’s nothing new about it.
In the beginning are the wordless — fire, air, earth, water, cells, plants, animals, eyes, and brains.
Who’s telling the story doesn’t make any difference.
13750 years ago, when words arrived, though they did nothing but divide the time on Earth into the Before Words and the After Words, they also changed the world more than any other event before or since.
I think it is no exaggeration to say words are the origin of humanity.
I’m not one to make new opinions or to invent anything. Everybody knows the word is a gift we’re meant to keep.
I think it is no exaggeration to say that the word is also the origin of you.
For without words, you doesn’t exist, and the reason we’re here and the wordless aren’t, is because we have words and the wordless haven’t.
I agree with the above quotes 100%.
Nevertheless, in THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT) I will do just that, talk of words the best I can to let you discover for yourself what words are, do, and have, how we respond to them, and what that says about us.
To produce the numbers, tables, and graphs in this book, I’ve worked with the help of the internet. I trust they will let you see what happened in liberating new ways.
Understanding words is never a question of quantity. There are always those who understand and those who don’t.
But on one thing, my friend, I give you my word.
When you change the way you look at words, the world changes.
The truths and limits of your world have got nothing to do with what’s out there.
The limits and truths of your world have got everything to do with your meaning of words.
No word can have your truth for you.
There’s no candle in the window.
It’s all up to you and artificial intelligence, whatever that’s supposed to be, doesn’t help.
What in the world have you, of all things, got to do with words?
Well, what you can feel, hear, smell, taste, touch, or see, or if you have a word for it, or if you have another word for it, it’s a word.
For this and other reasons as well, you is also part of THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT) — what you are, do, can, and have, how you respond, and what that says about you.
I’m a storyteller, not a philosopher, so what has philosophy, of all things, got to do with the origin of humanity?
Above marked in red, Why? is the basis of not only storytelling, but also of every philosophical pursuit.
I do read of philosophers whenever the time is right, most recently when I enrolled at the local “Journées philosophiques” earlier this year.
Among the speakers was Markus Gabriel, “a philosopher” according to Wikipedia (the world’s most-read reference work), “the thinker of the hour”, according to DIE ZEIT (over 270,000 subscribers use the digital ZEIT), and chair of epistemology and of modern- and present-day philosophy at the University of Bonn, Germany. For context only, a few of Markus Gabriel’s quotes.
A favorite of mine is Ludwig Wittgenstein, “considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century”, according to Wikipedia. For context only, below a few of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s quotes.
In THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT), simply look for what is useful, ignore the rest, or reach out to say hello.
Systemic change requires sharing the information.
If the information in this introduction is useful to you and maybe to others, please feel free to share it lock, stock, and barrel.
You can also listen to the book’s introduction by clicking the play button below.
You can purchase THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (WHAT CAN BE DENIED ONLY BY CONFIRMING IT) from my publisher, Books on Demand, from Amazon worldwide, or from any local book stores (on stock or by order).
