The Alphabetic Illusion

Humans survive (and thrive) by sensing, understanding and responding to energy patterns in their environment. Some of us perceive every subtle change, which can disorient and distract. We overcome such confusion with a networked mental map that prioritizes attention based on the setting, shape, position and velocity of objects. Our eyes track their movement, zooming in for detail and out for context. We orient these observations against objectives within a decision cycle well-suited for the flows of natural reality.

The linear structures of contemporary society stifle such fluid awareness. We can choose to avoid static spaces like classrooms and offices — though this limits options in societies that reward indoor prowess. A second challenge is unavoidable. Gathering information from environments beyond our senses requires interpretation of non-fiction writing — news, reports, books, etc. I believe we have difficulty interpreting the alphabet’s twenty-six uniform, monochromatic and static symbols because:

• The words the alphabet creates are often subjective and deceptive, with no tangible counterpart in reality.
• The sentences the words create gain meaning through grammar, which forces causality into the narrow human agency of subject-verb-object.
• The text the sentences create is linear and sequential, forcing visual cognition into rote, mechanical movement: left-to-right, top-to-bottom, beginning-to-end.
• That text is locked onto a rigid surface divorced from the energy flows of its creator and setting.

Reality is tangible, dynamic, cyclical, multi-causal and complex. Writing is the opposite. How can we expect such a crude tool to mediate accurate perception of places beyond our common senses?

Yet we require literacy to survive (and thrive.) The institutions that control our world — namely the state’s government, corporate and education bureaucracies — are created by alphabetic text and communicate through it. And what is the purpose of a state? Is it not to maintain a stable and predictable environment for the population inside? This fosters a dangerous illusion: that the future unfolds in linear progression and humans can control their destiny along this planned path.

​The primary human instinct is survival on Planet Earth. But the primary factor that determines habitable zones is beyond our control (if not our impact): the position and movement of water currents as they cycle between ocean and atmosphere. Their last major shift transitioned into the current macro-climate around 2,600 years ago. The monsoon winds dropped south, North Africa and West Asia desiccated. Out of this parched land came the “Late Bronze Age” states, midwives of Western Civilization.

We appear to have entered a new phase of climatic change, which many predict will collapse this civilization. That may be alarmist. It may not. Irrespective, we face significant uncertainty in the decades ahead. Navigating that fluid environment will require unlocking the abstract cages the literate state has erected around our collective perceptions of reality.

​Fortunately, most of humanity is descended from people who only entered literacy a few generations ago. Many of us retain the networked mental map that enabled our ancestors to adapt, survive (and thrive) before the alphabet tamed the planet’s terrain. Some of us have worked within the state’s static structures, and know how to manipulate its symbols. I believe we may hold the key to decoding the Illusion — if we perceive abstract space like we do physical space: as a fluid network of energy flows.

Killing Medusa presents one possible tool, the Ground Truth Dialectical Engine (GT Engine.)