I remember when my own speech center was coming on line. Probably earlier, but most consciously about 4, 3 to 5. I have 4 older siblings, between 11 and 7 years older and they were constantly arguing, debating, riffing off each other, had lots of friends around, doing the same. Consequently my own internal voice was loud and opinionated, though my sense of self was far more reticent, far more just wrapped up in the sense and motor functions of being, as I grew up on a farm, around more horses and cattle, than people.

Consider then that this Jewish tribal god, that became the touchstone of Western civilization, is about language.

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God."

The Covenant with God, the Ten Commandments, was the written law as religious icon. Not that there were not other written codes. Hammurabi's Code comes to mind, but that was sourced to some version of sun god.

Making language itself the God goes to that essential core voice.

Then even though the West professes to be atheistic, it still worships the accumulation of knowledge, even though the powers that be insist it be channeled into the approved narrative and anyone questioning it is a heretic, or conspiracy theorist, or anti-semite.

Though what is happening now, with images from Gaza being social media-ed around the planet, to hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, it is going to those much deeper parts of the brain, the basic sense and motor functions, no matter what that screechy little voice says.

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

The effect will be an emotional tsunami.