Round table № 3 Written languages

Diversity of writing systems, harmony of cultural development and planetary consciousness

Last Updated on , 30 November -0001 00:00

The transfer of writing techniques and experience as well as writing materials, such as papyrus, parchment and paper and later the printing technology throughout civilizations, the mutual influences and enrichment determined the development of written cultures in most of the world. In this process India, for example, gave the world a universal numerical system, which we in Europe call ‘Arab figures’ because they have reached us thanks to the intermediation of the Arab civilization. Religious symbols, such as the cross, the crescent, lion, etc. have also been signs well understood by people speaking different languages and of different cultures. Such are some modern signs related to transport, medicine, the internet communication now.

One of the first people that contemplated over the problem of universal communication of people from different countries and civilizations was the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) – he was the first one to formulate the necessity to create a characteristica universalis, universal writing system. To some extent this was achieved by the creation of some artificial, computer languages. Otherwise the problems of communication through written signs and languages in our world would have looked different: The more vivid domination of the English language and Latin writing would be opposed by the aspiration of different counties, cultures and civilizations to preserve and further develop their own languages, writing systems and traditions. Grounds for such world cultural policy are quite solid since countries such as China, India and Russia that have their own writing systems dominate large parts of the planet’s territory, population, economy and resources. Besides, many international documents that guarantee the future development of diverse writing systems, such as the Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions by UNESCO in 2005 have been passed.

There also exist similar directives of the European Union, Council of Europe, etc. Since 2007 when Bulgaria became a member of the European Union the Cyrillic alphabet, together with the Latin and Greek became one of the three official alphabets of united Europe. The efforts of international and naturally the relevant national organizations would be directed mainly, as this was trued regarding the protection of rare languages and cultures, at the preservation and development of autochthonic writing systems of smaller nations such as Armenians, Ethiopians, Syrian Christians and Copts, Laotians, etc. But regretfully there are still, regardless of the gradual and especially during the last century mass literacy campaigns for large parts of the world population still regions in Asia and Africa that lag years behind and the problem of literacy for millions of people still exists. To that we can add the problem of technological literacy and its even harder financial dimensions. The creation of an international platform for the preservation and development of written cultures, an international center-museum of world written culture and possibly a magazine provisionally called “Scriptura mundi” would correspond to the new way of planetary thinking and consciousness, to the ideas of harmonious and enjoying equal rights for development of civilizations and cultures, a policy of balanced diversity, the endorsement of individual identities of different civilizations in a situation of global transformations, in the process of formation of new architecture of the (post)crisis world.  The new communication technologies, the ‘live’ existence of writing in the internet, the electronic/mobile communications create, as any new technology, new chances and new challenges and threats for the preservation of individual, true written national cultures. To rely here, or for that matter in any other sphere, only on the ‘self-regulatory market principles’ is quite unwise as was proven by the latest developments in the world. We need new cultural policies, coordination of the efforts, information, preparation and realization of programs and decisions in order to secure in the future the integral civilization diversity of writing: as a universal cultural heritage and as a guarantee for the future harmonious spiritual development of humankind in the age of global economics and technologies in the world. To this planetary macrocosmic world corresponds the human, the individual microcosmic world. The creation, execution, use, reading of written signs which has been widened in scope during the last few decades by the instruments of the new communication technologies – this is a universal creative process but at the same time very personal one. Responsibility for the future development lies on society and its different institutions and on each literate and conscious individual representative of this society.