A literate person can never fully recover a sense of what the word is to purely oral people (12)
Sound exists only as it is going out of existence (32)
Think memorable thoughts (34)
Writing separates the knower from the known...(45)
You find what color bears are by looking at them. (52)
Judgement bears in on the individual from outside, not from within (54)
Sight isolates, sound incorporates (71)
The centering action of sound...affects man's sense of the cosmos (72)
Corinthians 3:6 "The letter kills but the spirit gives it life" (80)
Technologies are artificial but artificiality is natural to human beings (82)
"We can never forget enough of our familiar present to reconstitute in our minds any past in its full integrity (14)."
ReplyDeleteLiteracy has the power to both destroy and/or restore our minds. While written work can reconstruct memories, ideas, thoughts, and reactions, literacy can also impede the past. Moments can be interpreted as inaccurate and/or the reader can take out of context the authors original purpose. Recycled literacy has the ability to poison past truth, yet it also has the power to release forgotten wisdom.
"Texts are inherently contumacious." (79)
ReplyDeleteI mainly selected this quote out of my affinity for the word "contumacious", a word I gained an affinity for shortly after I read it in Ong and proceeded to define it.
This idea seems very Heidegger-esque, an idea that suggests texts as seeming to have a mind of their own. Preposterous. What could Ong mean?
I'm sure there are a number of things one could say, but this is how I perceive it...
I think people take what I am saying the wrong way a lot of times. When I convey this concern to friends, they always tell me something to the effect of "90% percent of communication is nonverbal." Yes, thank you Socrates. You have blown my mind.
In all seriousness, though, describing texts as "contumacious" captures this idea that texts, very possibly, do have a mind of their own. For example, in the previous paragraph was I being sarcastic, or am I truly listening to someone- a very wise someone- communicate the message to me. Is it possible that, just as Seth texts with Ong, I am speaking to Socrates? Is my mind really blown, or is this merely an expression? What does it even mean for a mind to be blown?
The authority of intention can quickly be lost by the counter authority of interpretation. No? Put differently, as you interpret what I say merely by looking at the text, the true message I intended may be lost by how you interpret the text. For all you know, I was talking to Socrates, my mind was blown, and I simply wanted to brag to you all about the fact that I in fact talk to Socrates. Don't think that, though. I don't want you to think I'm some weirdo who tries to talk to dead people. I'm not. And if you're one of those people, take no offense at my words. After all, they are merely words and, while I do think it is freaking weird to try to talk to dead people, I would not want you to be angered by knowing that I think that. And so it goes.
Do you see the problem? The words on the page are so vulnerable to every whim of interpretation and imagination. A dog is not merely a dog. Sometimes it is black, sometimes brown, sometimes large, sometimes small. In all instances, it is what people make of the symbols put before them. As Ong may say, the text becomes, as it were, contumacious.
Here are the two quotes from class that Dr. Sexson added to the list (my apologies for no page numbers):
ReplyDeleteWriting restructures conciousness.
Writing is a technology.
The alphabet was only invented once.
ReplyDeleteWriting weakens the mind. Ong page 78.
ReplyDeleteThat's it burn all the books.