Language Shapes Our World View

The creation of the abstract alphabet changed how humans view the world. Abram makes connections between the human psyche or mindset and the stages from concrete and abstract communication methods. Oral traditions would be considered concrete, and between oral traditions and the abstract alphabet was ideograms. This intermediary contained pictures that represent not the thing itself but a phenomena associated with that thing; for example, a circle behind lines could denote the sun rising behind a tree for East. These are human-made images that reflect the real-world around us. When images failed to handle more abstract words, characters or letters were developed for sounds of speech by Semitic scribes around 1500 BCE, and human speaking was now created by human-made signs. Abram argues that this shift created a different view of the world—one in which humans play a pivotal role and other beings were...