I know it is late, but in the interest of waiting for my sheets to dry I figured I would take the time and go ahead and do a little feature with a dear friend. We speak quite a lot and I have encouraged him to continue writing and submitting to publishers, knowing one of them will bite. I even encouraged him to submit his work to my own publisher, Permuted Press! I am hoping he hears from them soon and has good news to share.
So, I am handing over the blog tonight to good friend and fellow writer R.M Willis with his discussion on the BIG 5!
Civilizations Big 5
I work with teenagers, and like all youth they often have
questions that the average adult citizen is too busy to consider. The other day
a young man asked me what made civilization possible. It got me thinking. There
are many potential answers to this question; religion, law, money. All
certainly led to the growth of mankind, but I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to
get at the very roots of what created civilization, what we needed to move past
the animal stage. I came up with five things. Five things, that without which
man would have been surpassed by some other higher life form to dominate our
globe. Five things which gave birth to civilization itself, the first one of
course is fire.
Fire being a contributor to civilization is almost a no
brainer. It provided us with light, heat, and a place to congregate at night
and begin our oral history. Fire means protection, and the ability to cook our
food. Fire became the forge, gave birth to trains, led to rockets, and made
s’mores possible.
After fire the second most important invention to
civilization was the cup. The ability to contain water and take it with you
allowed mankind to venture out away from lakes and rivers. It made us mobile
and gave us the opportunity to settle and exploit parts of the world that were
never before possible.
Third is the ever important hammer. Why a hammer you might
ask. Well that’s easy. The hammer is the first real tool. Without a hammer we
couldn’t have made weapons, or other tools. In essence is gave us the ability
to create, and to build. It allowed us the opportunity to live outside of
caves, and even became a song! Ahh, if I only had a hammer.
Fourth is another no brainer, the wheel. The wheel made it
easy to move heavy things long distances. It allowed us to travel quickly, and
with a few modifications became the cogs in our machinery. The wheel as far as
inventions go is almost the most important one off all to the actual birth and
nurturing of civilization as we know it. There is however one more that I think
we must address. One so vitally important that without out it we may have died
off years ago, never to move past the infinitesimal stages of civilization that
the other four allowed to happen. I’m speaking of course of written language.
The ability to record and communicate accurately over space
and time was the true birth of civilization. There is no person more powerful
in history then the author who stares at a blank page. Why? Because history
itself would be unknown without it. We couldn’t learn, grow, or share ideas,
and we certainly couldn’t record them down for future generations. The written
word is what gave rise to the mass population that rules the world and now
ventures forth into space. Nothing past the first four inventions would have
been possible without it.
So that’s it. There is my answer. When I shared it with the
15 year old young man who asked me the question he smiled and thanked me. Since
then he’s thought about it and we’ve had many philosophical discussions about
life and its meaning, and that my friends is a good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment