There are so many fantastic blogs! I think I had a similar reaction as many of our classmates while reading Spencer's blog; it was extraordinary to see the human brain's amazing potential illustrated so clearly. I was also really intrigued by this thought from Parker's blog: "The oral tradition promotes mental processes that are integral to our past, while the exploration of literature serves as a catalyst for the development of our future". Parker's blog helped me cement my own motivation for why we should study the oral tradition, or why literature students (or everyone) should seek a balance when studying orality and writing. As he states, humanity should strive to avoid straying to one side of the extreme and allow the two to complement each other in a reflection of our own nature.
After rereading that wordy paragraph, I suppose I should reflect on this passage from Ong: "With writing, the mind is forced into a slowed-down pattern that affords it the opportunity to interfere with and reorganize its more normal, redundant processes" (Ong 40). It is a little unnerving to read about the artificial linear and analytical creations that we force our thought process to conform to, "structured by the technology of writing". While the thought process of a person raised in a primary oral culture appears foreign to our own, in reality we share the same fundamental ways of thinking shaped by our past traditions of orality. As Seth pointed out, "How do you know what you think until you see what you say" is usually a phrase repeated by Sexson in his classes (and by repetition, eventually etched into his students' memories). I always understood this in reference to the amazing capability of writing to organize chaotic thought into coherency. However, the word "say" itself suggests that there is more than one mean to achieve our desire for order.
After rereading that wordy paragraph, I suppose I should reflect on this passage from Ong: "With writing, the mind is forced into a slowed-down pattern that affords it the opportunity to interfere with and reorganize its more normal, redundant processes" (Ong 40). It is a little unnerving to read about the artificial linear and analytical creations that we force our thought process to conform to, "structured by the technology of writing". While the thought process of a person raised in a primary oral culture appears foreign to our own, in reality we share the same fundamental ways of thinking shaped by our past traditions of orality. As Seth pointed out, "How do you know what you think until you see what you say" is usually a phrase repeated by Sexson in his classes (and by repetition, eventually etched into his students' memories). I always understood this in reference to the amazing capability of writing to organize chaotic thought into coherency. However, the word "say" itself suggests that there is more than one mean to achieve our desire for order.
On a side note, while I don't remember engaging in many flyting battles with my brother (I don't think we were smart enough for that...when presented with a power struggle, we were more prone to hucking Legos than verbal dueling), for insults I would usually string together words that sounded insulting. For example, I would tell him that he was being a Pedantic Putz and let him make up whatever horrible meaning for the unknown word. Without the ability to read, the word only existed in sound for Brock. He could not “look up” pedantic and discover society’s accepted meaning for it. Instead, he was left to assume that pedantic was used to describe an individual who sh**s his pants in public (or something like that...I can only assume from his reaction, which was usually pretty entertaining). Although I didn't realize it at the time, I mispronounced pedantic something like “pen-dant-tic” because for me the word only existed on a page; I could identify it by sight, but possessed no understanding of its pronunciation or sound.
Guess the joke was on me.
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