Writing's Value, Global Language, Common Humanity
Three Point Thursday
Writing is infinitely valuable.
Socrates was right that the wisest man is the one who knows that he knows nothing. But it cannot be denied that noticeable changes to the effectiveness of your mind happen when you make a habit of writing. In other words, as Chuckie Sullivan from the movie Good Will Hunting would say, you become wicked smaht. This is manifested primarily through positive behavior changes. The more you write, the more your mind opens, and the more critically you think. You end up making better decisions, planning more long-term, and developing more fluent and articulate ways of speaking. I love the way Ted Chiang describes it in his short story collection Exhalation:
“…writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate.”
Most English speakers are non-native.
Although English has the highest total number of speakers in the world—at around 1.5 billion—Chinese and Spanish have more native speakers, at around 1.3 billion and 486 million, respectively. English has 380 million native speakers by comparison. The fact that there are more non-native than native speakers never ceases to amaze me. English enjoys this unique status as an international bridge language in many different contexts. I wonder how its role will continue to evolve.
Roman playwright Terence, 163 B.C.
“I am a human being, and thus nothing human is alien to me.”
