The language of words that humans have evolved over the last 50 thousand years or so, have helped make us the dominant species on earth but have also become the biggest millstone around our necks. Rudyard Kipling said “Words are of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind”. Words are great for poetry because their meaning is mostly suggestive and the listener fills in the gaps. Our minds which have evolved over millions of years through our animal ancestors, are an “instant answer” mind that gives us a subconscious instant answer to any situation. These are good instant answers because they have kept us alive and reproducing for millions of years. Words are a very recent addition, in evolutionary time, to our mind and we waste a lot of time translating our subconscious to and from words which have a very vague and questionable meaning. Our minds are not word based, but we need words to be conscious of our thoughts and to share them with others.

Technology has exasperated the situation. We assumed that when technology gave us the capability to speak to anyone, any time, any where, our ability to collaborate effectively would increase dramatically, it actually hampered collaboration. First, it drowns us in words, and second, we have learned to use words more like a drug to coerce, mislead and confuse in a political context, and technology makes that happen faster, has a further reach and provides anonymity to the speaker. 
The engineering community has long abandoned words in favour of a blueprint language. Imagine building a skyscraper that would not fall down, with narrative text. Yet we build our very complex political structures using only words. Words simply inflame the rhetoric, the partisanship with the vagueness and absence of a definitive meaning. This blueprint language may be part of the reason that engineering progress in the last 100 years has been astronomical but political progress has been marginal at best.
 

When we evolved our language, the only technology we had was a larynx that could make a large variety of sounds and a brain that could distinguish and associate meaning with different sounds. It is interesting to note that many animals have this same capability but none have evolved an elaborate language like we have. One theory is that words make lying too easy so animals stuck to body language and smells which makes deceit more difficult.
We need to evolve a new language that has the precision and accuracy of an engineering blueprint to collaborate about political matters. This will not of course look anything like an engineering blueprint but will give us the same benefits that blueprints have given the engineering community. We now have the technology to do this, a very powerful computer in everyone’s pocket called a smartphone. Phonetic symbols of course, won’t work.
Evolving a blueprint language for political and social debate will not be easy. There is an urgency however, the world political situation is rapidly taking us into some very dark corners and we must ensure that the futurists who say that computers will soon understand words like we do, are wrong. Imagine billions of computers using language like we do to persuade, control, deceive and evade meaning. This evolution must begin immediately if we are to avoid the negative consequences of our very faulty language.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Blueprints are pictures and pictures have so many advantages over the long sequential string of words we use today. A blueprint begins with a metaphorical floor plan, an overview of the whole layout of the discussion space. It shows how major components are related in space and size. The reader decides what to focus on and she can drill down to more and more detail. In a word narrative, the speaker decides what to present first and next and often what to omit. This gives the speaker much too much power and creates an ideal partisan framework.
A blueprint is not an off the cuff spontaneous statement like words tend to be. Blueprints are developed by many experts collaborating over an extended period, all details are supplied and nothing is left for the reader to infer. The blueprint is in fact the basis of collaboration and agreement. Words are like trying to construct a picture by looking at it with a pin hole lens but the speakers decides which part of the picture to focus on. It is always incomplete and biased by the speaker.
What might this social blueprint language look like? We don’t know yet, it must evolve over time? Evolution always provides an answer. Evolution means trying, rejecting, improving and spreading successes. Let’s assume that our subconscious mind works with things we will call “conceptual objects”. We don’t know what these are yet but they are snippets of of our mental model of how the world works. Animals who have no words would use these for thinking and deciding, as would pre language children. If we could identify what these conceptual objects are that we need to function and collaborate and then develop a way to represent them in a visual way on our smartphones, we would have the basis of a blueprint language. Academics have long suggested a visual language but they always begin with a formalism, a set of rules which implies we can design such a language. Nothing complex can be designed, it must evolve.
The basis for any political issue should be the metaphorical “floor plan” which shows the major components involved. This floor plan is the conceptual map of the discussion. The reader can choose which component to “drill down” for more detail but they will be aware of what else is involved. Imagine if all Brexit voters had a good conceptual map of all the issues that Brexit impacted, not just immigration. The outcome may have been much different.
A real floor plan is a two dimensional area that shows each room, how big it is, and how it connects to the other rooms. In our blueprint of abstract ideas, it could be one, two or many dimensions but it would still show the major components, how big they are and how they connect. It would have to be developed by many experts across partisan boundaries collaborating to produce an inclusive conceptual map showing all partisan positions. The key is to show the complete picture, not the bias that political speeches focus on.
Since political discussions are about how we should govern ourselves, the concept of “common good” is very key. Common good looks at how the benefits and pain of any political decision are spread across the population. The European Union reduces each country’s control of immigration but reduces the conflict of many factions competing and struggling for power brought on by balkanization and splitting jurisdictions. Everyone is partisan and their subconscious attaches a currency to the benefits and costs for comparison. A blueprint language could show the relative costs required for each position.

To bootstrap this evolutionary process, we need to look at what these subconscious conceptual objects might be. It is not surprising that many of the words we use have an underlying conceptual object. For example “fairness”. We all know what it means but a lot more needs to be said to make it have meaning in any particular use. It’s like having to fill out a 3 page form of the details in a given usage. A blueprint language could have a standard list of details that needed to be supplied for every usage of the concept.
Our own conceptual objects probably underly our partisan beliefs. Union and cooperation reduces conflict and infighting but it also reduces control of internal matters. Our own partisanship shows which we rank as more important.
Many abstract concepts are based on physical metaphors. Higher is better so when ranking options, the higher ones are better. This can be easily shown in a diagram.
Here are some more possible conceptual objects to start the process. They might survive, they may mutate and morph or they may die.
A fact – we want our decisions to be rational and evidence based. A fact has a lot of details, like a form that must be filled in if we want to use it. Things like the source, how accurate is it, what time period is it valid, evidence of authenticity, accuracy, etc. Politicians abuse facts routinely which often completely negates their statement. Facts might be shown visually in relation to other facts that might be relevant.
A scale – we need to order the things in our world, what ranks higher, how much different is it and what are the extremes. Scales are naturally represented visually.
Fairness – fairness is a very important concept in social thinking. To define it, we need to specify the currency of comparison, the stakeholder, the position of each stakeholder on the scale of the currency and the positions that one could take.
There are many ways to uncover our subconscious conceptual objects. We could study how children think and react before they know words. We could study how people paraphrase words they have read. We could observe animal behaviour and we could just throw ideas out there and see if they work.
How to make this happen
To make this happen we need a large player like Apple, Google, Microsoft or Facebook to give it legitimacy and provide a variety of free tools for people to begin experimenting. Our young generation which already does much of their communication through the smartphone will probably be the leaders in this effort. Politicians will resist and the older generation will probably be noncommittal but receptive because they would like to leave the world in a better place for their grandkids.