Reading and Writing are the building blocks of society

If you were to look at all the contribution that have been added to our society as a whole you’ll soon come upon a common thread. Almost all the work whether it was through law, policy making, scientific discoveries, literature or even music and song writing can all be linked to two fundamental activities; Reading and Writing.

If we were to look at the Greek, Roman, Mesopotamian civilization and how they advanced, what do we see. We see that activities such as reading, writing and debating are the reasons why these great empire thrived and became “great”. When we are trying to track down the path were knowledge was concentrated and follow it on a map, we see that knowledge tend to move to an area where the population is reading past experience and adding their own.

Whether it was from the Greeks to the Roman, the Arabs back to Europe, or Europe to North America. We see that these civilizations only became great after interpreting the knowledge that was acquired before them, analyzing it, questioning it and adding their two cents on the matter. And that is how great societies are built, it requires two parties trying to converse through writing and publishing. This exercise works well whether you are trying to support a certain topic or you are against it.

Reading and Writing have been the common thread between all the previous great civilizations!

Reading something that you either agree with or disagree with can lead you to doing more research on the topic, and once you increase your knowledge base you are better informed. Once you are better informed you are more articulate in trying to add to the topics you like, or become a proponent for a different point of view. All of this adds knowledge to our existing base, and together can grow and become better for it.

We have all heard “Knowledge is power” and often enough we start seeing it as more of cliche, but we cannot deny the truth that lies behind it. When we collectively try to add to the knowledge pool, the whole society rises up as a consequence of our action. But if we look around today, we see that there is a lack in the amount of people who are writing, whether it is articles, op-eds, book, etc.. it is becoming somewhat hard to find quality material to read and write about and that is a problem for the future of our societies.

People now are afraid or are too timid to publish what they think because of the fear of internet backlash, of being called haters, losers, or many other words that the internet trolls have invented. This fear is causing people to hold out their contributions and points of view that might shine a light on a new perspective, or to hear a new voice that isn’t just repeating what is already out there. The more points of view we add to a certain discussion the better we are able to make well informed decisions and actions.

I think that we as a collective, old and young, white and black, should be trying to increase our collective knowledge pool. Whenever I’m reading a book or an article, it forces me to remove myself and be placed in that persons point of view, and the more we do that, the more we’ll get a better understanding of the crazy world that is revolving around us.

I hope that you the reader would pick up your proverbial pen (keyboard) and your book (or screen) and start getting to work on enhancing our knowledge base of this world.