Alphabetical writing

(see also other key terms)

Shifting from local to common sense

Loosely speaking, alphabetical writing was introduced (alongside accountancy) to help rulers to build empires beyond the limits of the Dunbar number.
For example, the ancient Egyptians used it to communicate with their Semitic-speaking migrant workers.
In 2000 BCE Proto-Sinaitic script became the pre-cursor for subsequent alphabetic scripts used everywhere.
However, these changes would have tended to separate each meaning from its situated context.
- e.g. the bible's 10 commandments become unmitigated imperatives (deontological 'truths' without context).
Plato describes the moment when alphabetical writing was offered to the ruler of the day, King Thamus.
As he put it, the King was reluctant to implement it as he knew it would corrupt or distort the essence, the structure, the elements, the connections, the balances and the tensions of the prevailing culture.

Bureaucratic thinking

In other words the shift from pictographic to alphabetical writing would have had a 'dumbing-down' effect on the culture.
But it simplified communication across cultures and established bureaucracy (ca. 3500 BCE*) as a way to scale-up projects, beyond the boundaries of language and place.
This shift from pictorial thinking to the coding of the sound of words was more qualitative than quantitative.
As it was introduced to support colonialism it also encouraged complex situations into ‘channels’, or ‘modes’ of activity.
Whereas in complex pictographic script, each flourish of the brush may carry special nuances, in an alphabet with a restricted number of letters each is utterly distinct from each other.
Unlike pictographic writing, alphabetical letters act as arbitrary codes that no longer resemble the sounds they depict.
Until the era of printing, pictographs were always hand-drawn interpretations of pictures.
By contrast, alphabetical letters can be seen as ‘codes’ that must conform to arbitrary rules of identity.
Today, when you choose a font for a particular screen-based text you make no change to the alphabetical codes it represents.
A ‘b’ is always a ‘b’, irrespective of its typeface, layout, or colour.
When scribes copy alphabetical documents the only way to lose meaning is when a wrong letter is used.
The practical advantage of this system is that the textual essence of the message is not lost when it is transferred from one place to another.
Where the logic of codes is absolute this is not the case when we try to remember what someone said yesterday.
Nor is it the case with pictographic writing, because the forms of the characters may still carry nuances of pictorial meaning.
As such, the way they are written may add nuances of meaning that cannot easily be copied by another human being.
This is because humans respond emotionally to forms before they can depict them, thus enabling a great deal of knowledge to be conveyed as tacit wisdom that cannot be written alphabetically.
Recently, a common awareness of legally binding contracts has shifted the emphasis from personal conscience and 'responsibility' to one of 'professional accountability'.