Who was first, the wizard of Oz, or the wizard of words?
Well, when words were new, anyone could come up with a new one. Every child could do it. Be it as it may, it didn’t take our ancestors long to figure out there are two types of words.
The 1st word-type: The words for the things you can hear, smell, taste, touch, and see.
The 2nd word-type: Words that require IQ.
Scrolling back the years to 10,000 years ago, keep in mind that at the time, eye cue reigned supreme and IQ hadn’t been invented yet.
1st type of words: Sun
With the 1st type of words, it didn’t take our ancestor long to discover that when you repeatedly say “sun” while pointing at it, the need for the sun fades away and your audience can be made to see a sun just by saying the word.
Thus, tele-vision was invented.
Tele Vision
Many believe tele-vision is a recent invention, however, nothing could be farther from the truth. Call our ability to make assumptions a type of delusional trance or simply being mistaken, fact is:
“The soul never thinks without a picture.” – Aristotle
Though Aristotle put it in words for everybody to see only much later, our ancestor had already bitten into the apple, hence knew about words’ tele-vision feature, from the sun, 10,000 years before the invention of TV 94 years ago.
2nd type of words: Truth
Anyone could come up with truth, but to make others believe truth not only exists, but in a book you have a copy of, then as now, poses a different challenge altogether.
For example, you could say purple cow without breaking a sweat, but getting your audience to believe what you said took work, maybe more than we’ll ever know.
At the time, to believe, our ancestors demanded proof, that is, they demanded to see it with their own two eyes.
That means, for a start, that our ancestor who came up with purple cow had to paint a cow purple first, and then take the cow to the audience, or the audience to the cow, hoping it wouldn’t rain. Imagine the time and energy just to get that first purple cow into people’s heads. However, it was worth every minute and calorie because if it weren’t for the purple cow, we’d still demand proof.
Whether a word happened or not doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that it is true.
Storytelling
Once it worked with truth, the race was on for what the children (the younger the better) should hear at school. That is how storytelling began, and with it…
… Earth’s longest-lasting beauty contest ever. As well as the most divisive and deadliest.
Marketing
I’m not suggesting competing stories are how marketing began. All I’m saying is everything marketing knows, it knows from the marketing of words.
Nothing
Everything is a word. Nothing is a word. That, I think says more about words than a word-user ever could.