The origin of humanity E-Book

Beat Schindler

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 181

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Let you be surprised. Even more important, surprise yourself. THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY answers the questions of how it all began, and how to move forward in an uncertain world: Words and humanity appeared 13750 years ago. 13750 years ago, the appearance of words changed the world more than any other event before or since, the age was stone, the Sahara green, Northern Europe under 1-mile-thick ice, and writing had not been invented yet. THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY does not fight the old but instead tells the untold story of how it all began. It invites you to look at words as an alien might. New landscapes will unfold that have been there all along. But as you will find, the unfolding is you. "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." - Socrates "To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller When you change how you look at words, your world changes. For these and other reasons, THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY can offend.

Leseprobe

Acknowledgment

As one who has much to be thankful for, I dedicate THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY to my self, family, friends, doctors, and country for their unwavering love and support.

Contents

How to get maximum value from this book

Introduction

Terms and abbreviations

EARTH

The story of Earth

WORDS

Introduction to words

Word IS and ARE

Words ARE NOT

Words DO

Words CAN

Words DO NOT

Words HAVE

The story of words

Word-related

Art

Calendars

Stories

Alphabet

Language

Invention

Grammar

What others are writing about words

YOU

Introduction to you

You ARE

You ARE NOT

You DO

You CAN

You DO NOT

You HAVE

The story of you

What others are writing about you

EXECUTION (also known as IMPLEMENTATION)

Introduction to THE SIMPLE METHOD

THE SIMPLE METHOD

ANNEX

The state of the world and word

WHAT NEXT?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR & Books by the same author

DISCLAIMER & LEGAL NOTICE

TAKEAWAY

Potential benefits

Your support makes a difference

How to get maximum value from this book

Here are two things you can do to make THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY an interactive, ongoing learning experience.

1. Everything in this book is a word.

Stating the obvious might surprise you, but I’m doing it anyway for reasons that will make more sense as you read on.

THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY invites you to look at words as an alien would.

It requires changing an old habit for a new, and everybody knows how hard that can be.

But it will be worth in the end because once you get there, you can get things done that seemed impossible in the past.

2. Enjoy.

Enjoy the journey because it is amazing.

There is no risk involved. It will not change you, only how you look at the origin of humanity.

3. Register.

Register at https://schindlersword.com/register/ for a free subscription of the author’s Fresh Perspective delivered directly to your inbox

Introduction

Dear reader, THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY investigates and answers what everybody wants to know: How did it begin?

What happened?

What existed before humanity?

Why are we here and the wordless aren’t?

Origin can be denied only by confirming it, a word. The same applies to humanity.

Before words, words didn’t exist for self-evident reasons. After words, the only question on the table is when did words 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 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 invites you to look at words as an alien would.

Of course, THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY can offend for other reasons as well.

As you read my book, new landscapes will unfold that everybody knows have been there all along.

The unfolding is you.

But let’s begin in the beginning.

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 is about” to “ 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 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.

Words

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.

“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself.”

- Patrick Rothfuss

“What a word means, a sentence cannot say.”

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I agree with the above quotes 100%.

Nevertheless, in THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY 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.

Limits

The limits of your world have got nothing to do with what’s out there.

The limits of your world have got everything to do with your meaning of words.

No word can have your limits 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.

You

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 you are, do, can, and have, how you respond, and what that says about you.

Philosophy

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.

“It would be better if man would learn to understand himself as an animal again.”

“We will never know everything.”

“Society will always have to come to terms with man’s susceptibility to error.”

“We need an ethics of not knowing.”

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.

“All I know is what I have words for.”

“What a word means, a sentence cannot say.”

“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.”

“A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.”

“Call it a dream, it does not change anything.”

“What one cannot speak of, one must remain silent about.”

“Death is not an event in life.”

“If a question can be asked, then it can also be answered.”

“Everything that can be thought and said at all, can be thought and said clearly.”

“To say of two things that they are identical is nonsense. And to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.”

“I won’t say ‘See you tomorrow’ because that would be like predicting the future, and I’m pretty sure I can’t do that.”

“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.”

In THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY, 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.

Terms and abbreviations

The terms and abbreviations used in this book are listed below.

Before Words

The time before words.

After Words

The time after words.

Wordic and Pre-wordic

Replaces historic and pre-historic respectively.

Word-user

Replaces human, humanity, mankind, people, person, homo sapiens, and possibly others as well.

Wordy

Short for word-user.

Wordless

Replaces nature.

Earth Time

The 4.65 billion years between the birth of Earth and now.

Years ago

Replaces the math required by BCE, BC, CE, and AD to name a few.

Dates

Unless otherwise noted, all dates are based on the Julian calendar year 2022. For dates largely undisputed, the generally agreed date is used. For estimated dates, the date between the low and the high estimate is used. For dates of word-users no longer with us, the date between their date of birth and their date of death is used.

Medical cases

Medical cases are NOT part of THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY. They are excluded. For medical advice, you must ask your doctor.

Book OneEARTH

The story of Earth

The story of Earth Before Words

BEFORE WORDS

YEARS AGO

EVENT

4,650,000,000

Fire, Earth, Wind, Water

3,500,000,000

Cells

700,000,000

Plants

600,000,000

Animals

542,000,000

Eyes

500,000,000

Brains

©2023 Beat Schindler

Before Words, words don’t exist for self-evident reasons.

The story of Earth After Words

What word-users are, and what they do, are different stories entirely.

In terms of what they are — wordless — there’s nothing to tell them apart from the Before Words and the After Words.

But in terms what they do, everything changes After Words because the same wordless word-users now use words.

AFTER WORDS

EVENT

YEARS AGO

Words

13,750

Writing

5,000

Print*

1,150

Printing Press

580

Telegraph

188

Typewriter

152

Telephone

144

Radio

124

TV

93

Computer

81

Internet

31

*The oldest printed book, by method of woodblock printing.

©2023 Beat Schindler

If 4.65 billions years were a day

THE STORY OF EARTH

Period

Years

Percent

Before Words

4,649,986,250

99,9997

After Words

13,750

0.0003

Total

4.65 billion

100

©2023 Beat Schindler

During the story of Earth’s first 99.9997%, it had been wordless.

Only in the most recent 0.0003% of Earth’s existence has it been wordy.

Without words, nothing we have a word for would exist.

Only when the previously wordless began to use words have we been able to understand that the time Before Words and the time After Words are not the same — that in the beginning is the word has not only changed the world more than any other event before or since, but that it did, in fact, create it.

If 4.65 billion years were a day

If 4.65 billion years were a day, words would have arrived 0.026 seconds before midnight.

For context, 0.026 seconds is 40 times less than it takes for the blink of a word-user’s eye.

Also for context, 0.026 seconds was all it took for the number of words to explode from the original first to billions now.

NUMBER OF WORDS

Years ago

Words

Source / According to:

13,750

1

THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY (estimate).

24.9 million

wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary

“the world’s most-read reference work.”

4.5 billion

collins.co.uk/pages/elt

“analytical database with over 4.5 billion words.”

Now

21.36 billion

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries

“the world’s most-read reference work.”

37.725 billion

www.english-corpora.org

“the most widely used collection of corpora anywhere in the world.”

155 billion

www.english-corpora.org

“the most widely used collection of corpora anywhere in the world.”

©2023 Beat Schindler

The number of words now, 13750 years later, are more than any word-user can handle.

Coincidence

As if by coincidence, in the 0.026 seconds before midnight, the number of word-users has also exploded from the original first to 8 billion now.

Instead of asking which came first, the word-user or the word, it suddenly seems the word-user was the word’s idea for getting more words.

Coincidence

Not many inventions were made during the first 99.9997% of the time Before Words, and the few things that did, got invented slowly.

But in the 0.026 seconds since words first appeared, the number of inventions has gone through the roof.

Book TwoWORDS

Introduction to words

Words aren’t just the soundtrack to our existence. They are more much more than that.

“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself.” - Patrick Rothfuss

“What a word means, a sentence cannot say.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Words have not only changed the world, but they created it.

Words appeared when the age was stone, the Sahara green, Northern Europe under thick ice, and writing hadn’t been invented yet.

A word can be denied only by confirming it.

Words have no energy, hence do not matter.

Words have no meaning.

Words are a gift we’re meant to keep.

Words are used by word-users to describe the wordless.

Words are the limits of the word-users worlds.

Words have not only changed what we see, but how we see.

The word is in the beginning of nothing and of everything.

Words are not taught at school.

The story of words is not told anywhere.

Graduates know more about grammar than about words.

Words are what stories are made of.

The word-users need words to see themselves.

Words are how word-users aim at what they’re looking for.

The powerful have known in the beginning is the word since the beginning of words.

Words tend to get mistaken for evidence, and we often treat them that way.

The word-users love to use their words.

Never has a word been spoken that didn’t mean something to a word-user who heard it.

If words that never happened didn’t get invented, there’d be no need to state the obvious.

If you ignore what words can do to you, you can have no empathy for what words can do to others.

In THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY, words are used to fight against the word-user’s bewitchment of words.

That said, feel free to also use your own. After all, that’s what words are for.

The heart of the matter

Your heart may be cheating, dancing, trembling, aching, pounding, torn, broken, or breaking, simply because according to words, there is precious little a heart cannot do.

But what if the heart is just beating away quietly, doing its job? Then we tend to ignore it and take it for granted, don’t we?

Years of research have led me to conclude that the word-users respond to words in the similar ways. If our words are just doing their job, we take them for granted.

But the heart of the matter is that it’s the word, not the heart, that explains why we use words and the wordless aren’t.

Unlocking the secret of words

To unlock the secrets of words, you must understand that word (singular) and words (plural) work the same.

When you know how one word works, you know how every word works.

Common mistake

A common mistake word-users make with words is looking at them for what they are not. You know this happens when you see, for example:

“The spoken word” or “The word in writing”.

No matter if spoken or in writing, a word couldn’t be anything else if it tried.

You cannot get wet from the word “water.”

Whether preceded by a warning that a word is coming or embedded in “ ” or hyphens, words couldn’t be anything else if they tried.

Everybody knows

Words have a funny way of behaving like programs, but everybody knows it’s not the program, it’s the user.

But what everybody doesn’t know is that words work exactly like the programs.

It is not the word, it’s the user.

Word IS

Word IS: A word by any other word

In the wordless world

In the wordless world, word doesn’t exist for self-evident reasons.

In the wordy world

In the wordy world, if you can feel, hear, touch, smell, taste, or see it, or if you have a word for it, or if you have another word for it, it’s a word.

A word by any other word is not limited to but could include the following:

Able, actual, anecdote, answer, artifact, belief, bible, break, change, chat, comma, communicate, concept, conspire, consult, context, contrast, contranym, convention, converse, conversation, co-respond, data, dictionary, discussion, encyclopedia, epic, fables, fake, god, gossip, grammar, high, history, hyphen, I (capitalized 750 years ago to mark it as a word), information, intelligence, internet, key, knowledge, label, language, legend, letter, lie, life, linguistics, literally, me, meme, meaning, metaphor, name, narrative, news, normal, note, parable, paragraph, period, phrase, play, private, public, secondary, speech, question, quote, really, reality, report, response, saga, school, sentence, silence, stimulus, sound, statement, story, symbol, synonym, talk, testament, text, theory, thesaurus, thing, think, thought, truth, understand, unique, universe, university, value, verb, verse, vocabulary, wisdom, wise, wordless, work, world, worm, worry, worth, write, yarn, and you, to name a few.

Words ARE

Words ARE: In the beginning

In the wordless world