1 dbt. Ancient mankind lived only in an oral tradition, what’s the difference from now?

This will be a first attempt to have a mini-debate within one post. I invite our other team members to come into edit, and add their insights. Comments from anyone are welcome too.

[Remember a couple posts back I introduced a model, with the post, “8 wnt. Is WOKE a Collectivist Threat against Liberalism, or against Civilization as we know it?]  First, I had better start here with more questions than propositions.  That way I’ll get things going without imprinting my “slant” on it.  Second, if you want to follow this, either make a comment, or check back a few times to read on line, because with additional edits, you’ll only get this first email.  At least two of us plan to post today, but only the first one will be on this email.

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I can't know much about the oral, because (for some reason), I am a very visual person. Hearing is not a developed sense for me.  I mostly write something if I want to remember it.  Is that because I was brought up in a visual society with a written language?  (By the way, as a child I never excelled at writing, nor memory either).  Therefore, I have no wisdom to share about the oral. The point is, that anything I would say about the oral tradition, would be pure conjecture.  I am completely uninformed.  (As I said once before, maybe my best subject is only asking questions.)

Writing forms are ancient, but for the most part people were still in the oral tradition, even ages thereafter.  At a certain point the educated people could read and write, (way before English was invented).  This we are calling an "extension of mankind", because communication and memory were extended outside the human brain and outside the human voice.  Some view this as a kind of separation from our wholeness, and of course it is.  All of our human tools, our housing, and even our clothes are a separation from our original self, if you are defining “wholeness” as how the original prehistoric human was.  It is more than how he looked though, but how he envisioned the world.

We never look at just one thing: Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a more complete circle around ourselves, constituting what is present to us as we are. We are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.

But all images are man-made, and usually perceived with only that one focus. An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and is preserved - for a few moments, (or for a few centuries). Every image embodies a way of seeing, even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however-slightly, of the photographer selecting this sight from an infinity of other possible sights, and that angle and that perspective to display it.

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent.  By now there’s a whole series of learned assumptions about our interpretation. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Genius, Civilization, Form, Status, Taste, etc.

The past is never there waiting to be discovered, to be recognized for exactly what it is. History always constitutes the relation between the historian’s present, and the investigated past. Consequently, fear of what’s progressing in the present leads to mystification of the past. The past is not for living in; it is a well-of-conclusions from which we draw, in order to act, or to dither. Cultural mystification of the past entails a double loss.  Who benefits from this deprivation? In the end, the story of the past is being mystified because a privileged minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes, and such a justification has difficulty making any sense in modern terms. And so, inevitably, it mystifies.

The real "wholeness" came before language, (another conjecture here).  Let's say there was a word for birds, a “flying-thing”, but no words for different kinds of birds.  Then all the "flying-things" were one wholeness.  Maybe there was no word for flying, so these were just "things moving up above".  Mountains, rivers, forests, might just have had one word, for OUR HOME.  The other side of the mountain was THEIR HOME.

It is said that we are losing Wholeness as man's extensions (of communication, and tools), are getting more and more detailed.  I am thinking that then there must be some value to this described wholeness?  But there is also much value (that we directly know about), in extending man's abilities with tools and instruments. Must we call that fragmentation?

Then in communication and thinking, the various deepening of technology will be: writing manuscripts, printing books, and then television, movies and the Internet, the wired-community and now A.I..  Each phase has had a deep effect in altering the societal makeup. (As did the steam engine.) And now it is moving faster and faster, so it's very difficult to foresee what the effects, (and the side-effects) are going to be.

The thing we must realize is that these trajectories are historically almost never reversed, because they represent the momentum of hundreds of millions of people’s sentiments, and the gravity of entire countries and their political systems. There is almost no precedent you can think of where momentum was trending sharply toward a particular path like it is now, but then was ‘magically’ reversed.

It matters not at all if these trends have been "imprinted on society" by outside forces, and not authored by each individual's conscious choice.  Perhaps little or nothing is a conscious choice, - ever.  They are all past-driven in any case. Some people are doing things. They may be in an absolute minority.  But the result is what you see.

So then why are we analyzing this, if there is no alternative, and it can’t be reversed? 

Our theory must be that you can also live in a distorted atmosphere, if you are conscious of where it is trying to take you, and you chose not to go in that way.  (I really kind of doubt it.)  Maybe just a few individuals could conceivably stand back, while the rest of the lemmings trundle over the cliff. And who knows, maybe there is some kind of soft landing down there?

The question we are considering here is: WHERE IS OUR LANGUAGE TAKING US; NOT ONLY THROUGH ITS CONTENT, BUT BY ITS CONTINUOUSLY MUTATED FORM?

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MORE ON WHOLENESSS

from Prudent Perspectives:

For instance, what on earth could it mean to “all arise together as one thing” as one wholeness?  Let’s look at a skew, (a particular limitation) that western man, and so many other languages carry with them.  We actually gained our skills to think by the application of our particular written language.  So now we “think” in the way that it is written.  (As far as pre literate babies are concerned, none are reading this.)

Spoken language is all linear because in speech, one word follows another. Hearing two words at the same time would interfere with the correct hearing of either one. So, the spoken word is not very multi-dimensional.

Some written language can be different, because pictographs or glyphs express a whole idea within one symbol, in one moment.  All the images in a movie can do the same thing, or a newspaper front page is a mosaic. Also, a grouping in this pictographic writing can tell a story all at once, as a unified whole.  Separate glyphs of “mountain”, “lake”, “sun”, “fish”,

山， 湖， 太阳， 鱼，

Shān,     hú,       tàiyáng,     yú,

They can be in the attention simultaneously, and paint a unified picture, in any order.  It all arises together as one thing. There is no impending feeling I have to go further with it, I have to look before, or that it must lead me to something later on.

But every phonetic alphabet is extremely linear. Each word is made of a precise order of sounds or syllables.  Mix them up, or even add one more sound at the end and the meaning changes. So, this way in which we learned to think always has a tendency to follow a sequence in time.  The fish is there because of the lake, which is only possible because the sun melts the snow on the mountain. That is the only possible direction.

We are hard pressed not to believe in that sequence. We come to believe that time and cause and effect must underlie every real thing in the universe. This becomes our hidden axiom, we continually search for evidence, reject what doesn’t fit, and construe the world as such.

That is our western bias and how we envision reality.  That is our bias of how we can’t conceive of the timeless.  Timeless doesn’t feel natural and can only connote some kind of mystery for us.  We even prefer to add another dimension. It’s the “timeless dimension” (it’s out on a cul-de-sac somewhere), and it becomes another complication instead of a simplification. This is one more context of beliefs that we are blind to. 

I am not saying pictographs are better writing.  Most all written forms are now hybrids, with many purely phonetic symbols in the mix with a pictographic language. Thus, the language becomes more varied, and specifies more precise and intricate meanings. It becomes a broader vehicle for expression.

What’s the effect of this linear context on us?  We have a hard time to rest in what appears. We have to make a meaning somewhere. Our basic belief is that something must be underneath all this, (if cause and effect are always true), then we should discover it, and change something on the cause side.  Satisfaction is then elusive.

This explanation sounds very logical. We could even say, ‘now I see the light’. But do we; or is this just an abstract example trying to make something out of so-called “wholeness”? I am not Chinese, so I cannot say how pictographic writing affects me, or if it is any difference from English that I might know.   I am skeptical.

There is a lot more to it, that I don’t intend to go into. (Maybe next-time).  Like the written word is a repository for an idea; you can have a thought, and then let it rest in its written form. Come back to it at will.

Perhaps (more conjecture here), in the oral tradition there was little or no difference between speaking and doing.  In other words, every thought had an imperative, that must be done right now. A very impulsive society.

Enough for now.

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Here we're talking about the possible built in distortions of language.

From Global Advances:

Could languages be different, or are they all distortions. Language is a model of our perception, so a model will never be a perfect replica. Language is so beneficial that we're always going to use it. If it can be skewing our thinking process can we become aware of exactly what it is doing? Can we compensate for those side effects? These are the questions that I am putting to this discussion.

With language we notice contradictions. Those seem to manifest into problem areas. We like to have things sorted out in a "mono-direction", to have a logic train that reaches a conclusion. But contradictions break down our conclusions.

So in what part is the language creating the contradictions? Many times, we hear it said that duality is linguistic. As soon as you label “this”, there arises “not-this” by inference. And that perhaps, nature without labels contains no opposites. Is that the said "wholeness" that we might be missing? (That is not a conclusion, but a question.)

People do search for perception without language, which conceivably wouldn’t have opposites. It is called “meditation” and the like, and then sometimes the result is a perception of no separation. (Well, it is more like no "ME" can appear in the absence of language. So it is not that I am not-separate, but that I am NOT.) It must mean that the ME is a linguistic creation, or a series of memories. It is pretty thrilling, and I would say I have shared in that interest. But my conclusion was, that it was not much of a motivation for life on this planet. It could subdue certain erroneous and conflicting beliefs, but it didn’t seem to have any forward momentum to feed-and-house my family, and interact in my community. Also, when it left it, I was back in the same old thought structure.

It is more a belief that "God will take care", with no demonstration other than I am here. Is presence the extent of "taking care"?

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I read an excerpt from Mao Zedong, that was philosophical from the Chinese traditions. He was talking about contradictions, and not about non-duality or oneness, it was really a comment on Duality, (in all things, and probably what the Yin and the Yang mean to him). He did not say oneness or that all things are connected, which is even obvious in certain contexts, that all matter is made of the same atoms and molecules that touch each other.

But he did say that each thing (or each idea) contains elements that are interpreted as opposites or in contradiction, (from the interpretation I am guessing from language). And some cultures equate that to the world is always in conflict, and you are either with-us, or against-us. But in reality this contradiction, (a thing and its opposite), creates an internal tension that engenders movement. It makes possible all further development for each thing in nature and in the world.

From that, I called duality the animating principle, or the life-force. Mao did not exactly say that either, but he may have indicated that the internal tension was an animating principle, both in the material world and in the movements of society. There is a vast difference between saying that within each thing, or concept, apparent opposites are an identity or in unity, (because they work together; as the Yin and the Yang), or then asserting that between all (separate) things, there is a unity. The "Oneness" of all creation.

I have never denied oneness, (and I have never affirmed it), but I said it is a personal subjective experience. Really, it's before words so it’s also before discussion, but you can say a few things about it. Let's say it is an experience within stillness, so there is less interpretation going on. But then it quickly gets interpreted, and anyhow consciousness is already an interpretation of sorts by itself. Our mode of interpretation sees boundaries. Therefore, interpretation is the seat of separation, and contradiction.

IS THIS THE BIAS THAT LANGUAGE LEADS US TO?

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What are we trying to accomplish here in this post, and in our overall team effort?

From Librarian:

Sorry for the delay, I hope that I am not late for the party.

Collectively humans have a lot of good ideas, but the world, and our own national government and our institutions are still in a mess. That is shorthand for saying there is a lot of conflict.

✔️One way to explain it is that the ideas are good, but conflict is the nature of mankind.

✔️Another way to explain it is that the ideas and their practice are not all that good. And that misapplied, bad ideas cause most of the conflict. This second way is more hopeful.

So, what’s missing, what is the blind spot? To uncover that, is what we are trying to accomplish, or to point toward. In this post we are saying maybe (and for sure) the nature of each language skews us toward a certain way of thinking, and that way has not been productive toward cooperation. Feeling and acting depends on perceptions. Each language draws a magic circle round the people to which it belongs, a circle from which there is no escape, save by stepping out of it. A scientist seeks to become aware of the bias of the instruments of research, in order to correct that bias.

Hitherto most people have accepted their cultures as a fate, like climate or vernacular; but our empathic awareness of the exact modes of many cultures, is itself a liberation from them as prisons.  The written word is another layer in obscuring the natural state, even more than the spoken word.

Writing is a visual enclosure of non-visual spaces and senses. It is, therefore, an abstraction of the visual, from the ordinary sense-interplay. Each object might be (is) a unity that cannot be broken down into separate qualities without becoming merely a collection of abstractions that have only conceptual existence and no actuality. (A verbal model.)  In a funny way, words and their necessary linear syntactical order forbid us to describe objects in their wholeness, and compel us to use very poor and inadequate lists of theoretical ingredients, in the manner exemplified more concretely by ordinary cook book recipes.

Whereas, speech is an outering (an utterance) of all of our senses at once, writing only visually abstracts from that speech.  This might be, in part, the “wholeness” given up that we are discussing.

Nonliterate man casts the net of thought over the whole world. Mythology and religion may be closely related, but whereas the former grows out of man's everyday life, the other grows out of his concern with the supernatural. And so, it is with his view of the world, which will be compounded of secular, religious, mythological, magical, and experiential elements all rolled into one. (Wholeness)

Any oral, (pre-writing), man, even "a peasant of Christian Europe" retains some of the old auditory resonance and aura of a Sacred man. So long as a culture is non-literate, it has indispensable Sacred ingredients.  Here Sacred doesn’t mean scriptural, but an undying respect, wonder and awe for life, society and the environment.  The more "literate" people become, the more they tend to become detached from the world in which they live, and separate from the means of life, (profaned).  They concentrate only on the symbols of life.

The sacred and profane are two modes of being in the world, two existential situations assumed by man in the course of his history. These modes of being in the world are not of concern only to the history of religions or to sociology; they are not the object only of historical, sociological, or ethnological study. In the last analysis, the sacred and profane modes of being depend upon the different positions that man has conquered in thought and deed; hence they are of concern both to the philosopher and to anyone seeking to discover the possible dimensions of human existence.

Man has long been engaged in extending one or another of his sense organs (with tools and instruments), in such a manner which disturbs and unbalances all of his other senses and faculties. But the price we pay for special technological tools, whether the wheel or the alphabet or the radio, is that these massive extensions of sense constitute closed systems of awareness, closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. While the assumption is that everything is the same “reality”, such closed systems cannot make contact with the facts of historical change.  Having made these experiments, men have consistently omitted to follow them with observations. What has this done to me, and how can I compensate for it? McLuhan

The idea that knowledge is essentially book learning seems to be another modern view, probably derived from the medieval distinctions between clerk and layman. We cannot think of sounds without thinking of letters; we believe letters have sounds. By the meaningless signs, linked to the meaningless sounds, we have built the shape and meaning of Western (all) man.  We think that the printed page is a picture of what we say, and a reflection of “what is”, and that the mysterious thing called "spelling" is sacred.  The invention of printing, broadcast the printed language and gave to print a degree of authority that it has never lost."

The linearity of learning through written language (print culture), means the explicitness of focus on one thing at a time, one sense at a time, one mental or physical operation at a time. (Psychologists define hypnosis as the filling of the field of attention by one sense only.)  Furthermore, print culture is accurately repeatable.  Considering one thing at a time, and always repeating, forces us to think that is how reality is, a series of fixed “things”.  But reality is continually changing and completely interlinked, not just repeating, and not really separable.  Changing one thing, changes everything else.  As that becomes more obvious, our descriptive contradictions become apparent, and we must conflict over them.

Maybe we can become more aware of these unconscious tendencies.  We certainly can’t undo them, or go back to an earlier era.  World society is completely dependent on our existing state of technology, and the beliefs that created them.

I have not considered how different cultures and different languages could hold to different foundational views.  Discovering more about that would show us that other systems also function, meaning that we could likely find a better way out of our own discord.  It would have to be our new discovery, and not any kind of a transplant though.

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