The philosophy of writing
Imagine…
Imagine you’re waking up on a planet far, far away. Let’s call it Planet X.
You don’t know how you got there. The only thing you know is that you’re really there.
Imagine Planet X looks precisely like planet Earth, with only one very important difference: writing doesn’t exist on Planet X!
No books, letters, cards, post-it notes, nothing. There is simply no way for people to express their thoughts on paper or digitally. Nobody ever thought about writing, as we only thought about moving to Mars after Elon started talking about it.
Now imagine you’re the only lucky bastard who knows how to write. You’re from the legendary planet Earth and writing is for you as common as breathing or eating potatoes (this will be the case when you’re from The Netherlands, at least).
Besides writing, you also can teach others. You know how to explain things like a natural tutor. And that’s what you’re going to do right away.
You write a short story and start showing it to a small group of people you meet. They are immediately flabbergasted (of course, what would you be!) and are dying to know more about it. So you teach them. You teach them how to write, and soon they realize the fantastic potential writing holds for exchanging ideas and recording events. It takes a little while before the group grows, and the craft of writing goes viral around Planet X.
You can imagine that writing transformed Planet X drastically, just like it did with Earth back in the day and still does. From now on, habitants of Planet X can preserve history, record thoughts and events, note their beliefs, values, and so on. The written word kicked the spoken word from the number 1 communication position in a matter of time. It became a tool for communication and a source of inspiration.
However… (you don’t need to imagine this ‘however’… you know there is a ‘however’ when a revolutionary thing like writing occurs)
As with any new technology, many challenges were hiding around every corner. Writing thoughts on paper is fantastic, but misinformation and lies are easy to spread. Censorship becomes a concern as governments and other powerful entities attempt to control what can be written and what cannot.
You, a former Earthling, see what the writing revolution does to Planet X and you start to reflect. It’s a double-edged sword. While writing has the power to spread positivity, progress and understanding, it also has the dark potential to cause harm and create the polarization. We, as writers, should think deeply about that. As writers, we are responsible for using this brilliant tool carefully and respectfully. Our words will travel from the moment we set them free from our pen or keyboard. And it’s our responsibility to think carefully about their impact on all the places our words will visit.
