A truly great story! but overmuch “should’ve” while a conspicuous lack of introspect. After reading all comments I wonder who realises that the “Arabic/Hindu 10-digit calculating system was, in Europe, wilfully prevented from spreading for over 600 years by those wielding the power at the time. AD.1000 - AD.1600.
Have our power-wielders and us, their subjects, meanwhile grown wiser? Hardly.
Please check this:
1930 and 1950: Sir Richard Paget wrote: “We are in the alarming position of having enormous control over the forces of nature, and very little reasoning power to guide our actions —in fact, very much like a lot of children playing with loaded guns. Man it appears, is still handicapped by his muddled way of thinking. May it not be that much of this unreasonable muddle is due to the simple fact that our symbols for thought—language—are not yet set in order; that in the matter of thought symbolism we are still much in the same state of confusion as the Romans were in their arithmetic? We should be horrified at the difficulty of multiplying MDCCIX by LVII.
How would Sir Richard view our position today?
300 years ago, the great Leibnitz prophesied that one day someone will invent a method so simple that even children will learn to recognise ( and avoid ) those dangerous words that destroy the peace in the homes and in the nations.
In 1679 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote “A Universal Symbolism, very popular, might be introduced if small figures were employed in the place of words, which would represent visible things by their lines and the invisible, by the visible which accompany them.
This true method of a Universal Symbolism would furnish us with a certain sensible medium which will guide the mind as do the lines drawn in geometry, and the formulas for operation in arithmetic.
By the combination of these signs a system of true knowledge could be built up, in which reality would be more and more adequately represented by a definite sign and symbolised.
This would be of service at first for easy communication with distant nations; but if introduced also among us, without however renouncing ordinary writing, would be useful in giving thoughts less absurd and verbal than we now have.
In time everybody would learn the plan in youth, and it would be very agreeable to the people, just as in fact, the peasants already have almanacs, telling them without words much that they ask.
I think these thoughts will some day be carried out, so agreeable and natural appears to me this writing for increasing the perfection of our mind, and rendering our conceptions more real.” ( Original in German, as I remember,: “von nicht geringer folgenschwere um unsere Geistesvollkommenheit zu vermehren und unsere Ideen reeller zu machen.” )
The Universal Symbolism Leibnitz visualized, was being 'born' ca. 1941 by a Jewish escapee from Hitler's death camps, while interned in the Shanghai Ghetto - China under Japanese command. His name: CHARLES K. BLISS, who at the time new nothing about Leibnitz' prophesy. After liberation he lived in Sydney - Australia, laboriously published his home - stencilled book, wrote to all educators he could reach and had many explanatory pamphlets printed. Not one replied. Bliss died,
disillusioned, 1985. He should have been honoured with the Nobel Price.
Those who wield the power today have no interest in considering a serious look into an inventioned for the betterment of man's mind. The public prefers watching Walt Disney cartoons. They would likewise have been most readily accepted by the people a thousand years ago.
The above has grown too long. For those interested Wikipedia shows rudiments under CHARLES K. BLISS.'