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Imagine if there were a high school in America today with a zero percent literacy rate, a high school where none of the students or teachers knew how to read. Would this high school get national media attention? Actually, it would probably get international media attention, because today we recognize that literacy is the foundation of education, and we have constructed our society around literacy.

Now imagine going back in time to 1200 BC in ancient Greece. This was around the time period of the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans. In 1200 BC the Greek and Trojan societies were almost completely illiterate. This is why none of the characters in the Iliad, which takes place during the Trojan War, know how to read. Not even the kings and princes know how to read. Achilles, Odysseus, Hector, and Priam are very intelligent, but they are illiterate.^**

Imagine trying to convince the Greeks and Trojans in 1200 BC that they should have universal literacy. Would this be an easy or difficult thing to do? It would be very difficult, because how do you explain the concept of universal literacy to people who have never heard of reading and writing?

If you told them, “Writing is a process where you make marks on something, and the marks symbolize sounds,” they might respond, “What is the point of that? Why go through all that trouble? Why not just use your voice to communicate, or send a messenger to relay your message?”

If you said, “Literacy allows you to read books and letters,” they would respond, “What is a book? What is a letter?” Explaining what books and letters are to people who have no concept of literacy would be difficult, but explaining what we use literacy for in the twenty-first century would probably be impossible. Literacy is more important now than it has ever been, because today we have expanded our use of literacy to include e-mail, text messages, the Internet, Facebook, ordering from menus, buying subway tickets, using street signs to navigate, and much more. How could you possibly explain the concept of the Internet to people living in 1200 BC? How could they even begin to comprehend what the Internet is, if they don’t even know what literacy is?

If you are living in a small nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe, then you don’t need literacy. But if you are living in a large agricultural civilization consisting of several hundred thousand or several million people, then literacy becomes essential. That is why large agricultural civilizations all over the world eventually reach a point where they try to develop a written language, whether in ancient China, India, Sumer, Egypt, Carthage, Rome, or on the other side of the globe in the land of the Aztecs and the Maya.^*

Literacy is something we often take for granted today, but why is literacy so important? When I ask audiences this question, they often say that literacy is important because it allows us to distribute information. But there are two larger reasons why literacy is important. The first larger reason is that, as Francis Bacon said, “Knowledge is power.”¹⁶ There is a reason why American slave owners made it illegal for slaves to learn how to read. There is a reason why the Nazis burned books and why throughout history dictators have banned books. There is a reason why Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head for trying to promote literacy and education for women, and there is a reason why the Taliban doesn’t want women to become educated. When you deny people literacy, you also deny them power.

The second larger reason why literacy is important is that literacy not only allows us to distribute information, but literacy also gives us access to entirely new kinds of information. One of the new forms of information that literacy gives us access to is history. History cannot exist without literacy.¹⁷ This might sound odd, but the reason history requires literacy is because without literacy, you cannot separate history from mythology. If you were to ask an ancient Greek man in 1200 BC who his ancestors were, he might say, “On my father’s side my distant ancestor was Zeus, and on my mother’s side my distant ancestor was Aphrodite.” That would sound normal back then, but that would sound very strange today. Because they lacked a written history, the ancient Greeks and Trojans also did not seem to have any historical memory that they once lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers for countless generations. Instead, they seemed to believe that their ancestors, after being created by Greek deities, had always lived in an agricultural civilization.

Another new form of information that literacy gives us access to is science. Literacy makes every scientific field possible, because literacy allows us to organize and analyze information in new ways. So if you like electricity, then thank literacy. If you have ever benefitted from antibiotics, then thank literacy. In addition, complex math cannot exist without literacy. Algebra, trigonometry, and calculus require a written language.

Because literacy allows the human mind to expand and explore in so many ways, literacy is perhaps humanity’s greatest invention. Humanity discovered how to use fire, but we invented literacy. Some people might argue that the wheel is humanity’s greatest invention, but history, science, and complex math can exist without the wheel. They cannot exist without a written language. Unlike spoken language, walking, and other natural human abilities that are as old as our species, reading and writing are not natural human abilities, but relatively recent inventions.

A better term for the ancient Greeks and Trojans living in 1200 BC is not illiterate, but preliterate, because they did not yet understand why literacy was an essential step in their society’s evolution. They lacked awareness of what literacy even meant, because when you live in a preliterate society, you don’t realize you are preliterate.

Now the point I want to make is, what if all of us in the twenty-first century are living in a preliterate society and we don’t even realize it? We are not preliterate in reading, but in something else. What if we are living in a society that is preliterate in peace, and a major reason why we have so many national problems, global problems, and even personal and family problems is that our society is preliterate in peace. Just as literacy in reading gives us access to new kinds of information such as history, science, and complex math, literacy in peace also gives us access to new kinds of information such as solutions to our national and global problems, along with solutions to many of our personal and family problems.

As I discussed earlier, humanity’s understanding of democracy has been evolving, and we have to consider the likely possibility that our understanding of democracy in the twenty-first century is still very limited. Just as the ancient Greeks did not have plants such as universal human rights and women’s rights in their garden of democracy—plants that people today realize are essential to democracy—our society is missing another plant that is just as essential. That plant is peace literacy.

Furthermore, just as the ancient Greeks were not even aware that universal human rights and women’s rights were needed in a healthy democracy, most people living today are not even aware that peace literacy is needed in a healthy democracy. Most people living in 500 BC had never even heard of ideas such as universal human rights and a woman’s right to full political, social, and economic equality. In a similar way, most people living today have never even heard of the idea of peace literacy.

A democracy that lacks peace literacy will eventually destroy itself in one way or another, because peace literacy gives people the kind of education that inoculates them against manipulation and the seductive lies that spread hatred, dehumanization, and irrational fear. A democracy is only as wise as its citizens, and as I will discuss later in this book, peace literacy is necessary to generate the wisdom that can protect our society from one of humanity’s most dangerous powers: the muscle of language.

If humanity remains preliterate in peace, the future of American democracy, along with all democracies around the world, will be a dangerous one. A future where humanity is preliterate in peace will also be dangerous in many other ways. As I discuss later in this book, I grew up in a violent household and had a traumatic upbringing, and peace literacy has helped me transcend my childhood trauma, control the homicidal rage that resulted from that trauma, heal my psychological wounds, and find purpose, meaning, and happiness in life. Peace literacy empowers us to heal the underlying causes of trauma and rage in our society while increasing our purpose, meaning, and happiness in life.

If humanity survives its current global challenges by becoming peace literate, then people in the future will think, “Why didn’t people back then realize they were preliterate in peace and that they needed peace literacy? It seems so obvious! No wonder the world back then was so violent and unjust.” Although the need for peace literacy seems obvious, the mission of spreading peace literacy is very challenging right now, because so many people today are fond of easy answers and quick fixes that merely address the shallow surface and do not confront the root causes of our problems. Peace literacy is not offering easy answers and quick fixes, but is instead a deep and complex solution to deep and complex problems.

The garden of democracy is filled with a wide variety of plants, but peace literacy is a tree that we need to cultivate in this garden. The tree of peace literacy has seven branches that are capable of bearing fruit that nourishes progress, peace, and the unfolding of our full human potential. These seven branches are metaphors for the seven forms of peace literacy. During an era when humanity has the technological capacity to bring death to our species and most life on Earth, the tree of peace literacy is a tree of life that can protect, serve, and elevate life.