Scarcity

[Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema]

In ORALITY AND LITERACY, Walter J. Ong shows, as Kelley argues, that the two are
quite different, and that literacy opens many possibilities that didn't exist
before. He further differentiates societies where there was literacy in the
written word, and others which are "typographic" where the gain in ego
functioning, and abstraction that comes with literacy can become the attainment of
the masses. Not only was print and publishing one of the first integrated economic
activities, but the first best-selling European writer was Luther. The protestant
reformation, and the other reformations (including the internal reforms of the
roman church) that followed, was only possible because of literacy, where previous
efforts like Catharism, had failed. Oral peasant cultures tend to be
instrumentally magical in their supernatural thinking. Literate cultures tend to
develop broader conceptions of overarching forces, like the Christian god, who is,
as Durkheim would probably say, a collective representation of the market. As the
market has developed, imaginings of god have developed too, in a wide range of
ways.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

Kelley Walker wrote:


> can't have much of a mass revo in a world in which language is extremely
> localized and in which knowledge is communicated via oral tradition.
>
> At 11:20 AM 4/12/01 -0500, Forstater, Mathew wrote:
> >The charge of
> >"illiteracy" ignores the tremendous oral literatures of noncapitalist
> >societies,
> >and the democratic integration of artisitc and creative traditions with daily
> >life.  Note that the term
> >"primitive community" indicates that Hobsbawm is not here talking about
> >feudalism, and especially European feudalism, which is what Brad seems to be
> >primarily refering to.  It would not even indicate major tributary
> >communal-despotic formations.  Rather, it would refer to those basically
> >stateless, classless, communities.  Again, why we are not able to learn
> >from what is best about societies without accepting the mistakes is beyond
> >me (unlessit can be shown that the positive is inextricably linked to the
> >negative, butthat must be demonstrated, not assumed).  In another context,
> >why shouldn't non-industrialized nations be able to learn from both the
> >mistakes and the
> >advances of industrialized ones (use newer technologies without environmental
> >destruction--with the qualifier given just above)? Mat
> >