"Iâve been reading a book about reading. Itâs got my mind running in circles, so already its title is appropriate, Becoming Beside Ourselves. Itâs by Brian Rotman, who makes a case that the habits of the alphabet, of reading and writing, have added such a wide collection of skills and rituals to Western culture and so influenced the post-natal development of the brain that weâre too immersed to be aware of how much alphabetic reading and writing are responsible for notions at the foundation of Western thought, like our concept of mind, and logic, and our ability to imagine what Rotman calls a âdisembodied monobeingâ...."