Philip Ball helped me understand this in his book "How Life Works." He makes the point that you can't understand language by understanding letters. Walking up to someone and just saying "L" won't have any effect. And given just an understanding of the alphabet, you would never be able to use that on its own to understand a whole book, you have to move up. The whole has its own kind of existence. I think about how hard it is for one individual to influence a culture. You kind of have to speak and operate at the highest level to change things. I know that's super vague but those are just the terms I've been thinking about it in.