For the second half of the book Orality and Literacy, I am going to focus on why some people were critical of writing when it started to make an appearance in society.
A major criticism of writing which was surprisingly held by Plato, was that it destroys memory. He claimed that if people began to use writing, they would begin to rely on it and become forgetful. A modern-day parallel that can be drawn to this is people’s criticism of children using calculators rather than learning how to do basic math mentally. Another criticism of writing is that it is unable to defend itself like one can defend their opinions when engaging in back and forth speech. Because of this, writing has been viewed as “passive” or “unnatural” or “artificial”, which are also common critiques that some modern-day people have of computers.
I definitely have an easier time understanding the first criticism I mentioned. When cultures were centered around orality, I imagine that people’s capacity of memory was much larger, because they simply had no other choice but to remember it if they wished to possess/utilize that knowledge. I think the comparison to children using calculators is a good analogy. I specifically remember being in third grade and my teacher really emphasizing the importance of memorizing our multiplication tables. I feel that being able to do simple equations mentally rather than having to pull out a calculator every time is much more efficient and just makes more sense. However, I only agree with this argument to a certain extent. I think that there is only a certain amount of information we can hold in our heads, and that there is obviously too much information in the world to be able to know all of it. Even if we were to pick one subject and devote our lives to it, there is a small likelihood that we would be able to call upon any given piece of that information at any given time just from our memories. Of course I’m not saying that if one is truly passionate about a certain subject, they shouldn’t try to become as versed in it as possible, but I do believe that writing/documentation of knowledge was supplemental to our previously oral culture and helps to fill the void between all that we know, and the rest of the available information. The ironic part of this argument coming from Plato is that he put these objections of his into writing. A really valid point that the book brings up is that “Writing print and computer are all ways of technologizing the word. Once the word is technologized, there is no effective way to criticize what technology has done with it without the aid of the highest technology available.”
As for the second criticism, where writing is viewed as artificial in the negative sense of the word (Corinthians 3:6 went as far as to associate it with death), the book points out what a paradox that statement actually is. I never would have thought to phrase it this way, but it makes perfect sense to me: “The paradox lies in the fact that the deadness of the text, it’s removal from the living human lifeworld, its rigid visual fixity, assures its endurance and its potential for being resurrected into limitless living contexts by a potentially infinite number of living readers.” Because of it’s ‘deadness’, writing has a much farther reach than any single person, both in terms of actual distance and in terms of time. If one piece of knowledge were to be passed down generation after generation orally, but then at one point someone decided to stop passing it on, it would be lost. However, someone could include that piece of information in a book for example, and 100 years later on the other side of the world, someone could pick that book up, see that information, and it would remain alive.
My previous paragraph dealt with writing’s supposed artificiality from the viewpoint that it is beneficial in terms of how efficiently it preserves and spreads important information. This paragraph objects to that criticism in respect to how writing affects us on a more personal/spiritual level. Artificial does not necessarily have to be a bad thing; All technology is artificial. Although one may not initially think of it this way, writing is indeed a technology. There is no denying that in many cases, technology has benefitted humankind. An analogy the book uses to prove this point is playing a musical instrument. Instruments are essentially tools. Learning to operate these tools means following a specific set of instructions. The result of this (music) is a form of self-expression that is inarguably human and could not be achieved without the use of said tool. The ability to operate this tool in such a way requires extensive practice. “Such shaping of a tool to oneself, learning a technological skill, is hardly dehumanizing.” I believe that a parallel can be drawn from this to writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment