David Abram: The Alphabet, the Mind and the World

[tazmic]

Your interpretation of what McLuhan "meant" is just as misguided as my own...

[JackRiddler]

That's the thesis of my book, The Alphabet versus the Goddess. If you look in history and see what happened, the first book that was ever written in an alphabet is the Old Testament. That's about 900 BC. In this book, the most important centerpiece is the Ten Commandments.

Seriously, the Old Testament was the first book ever written in an alphabet, even though cuneiform had by then been around for 2,000 years? And what about the Rg Veda, thought to date between 1700-1100 BC? (so sez wikipedia)

That's quite a declaration from Dr. Leonard Shlain, to brag that he wrote a whole book on such an easily disprovable premise.

If he's so off-base right from the start, should I even bother continuing to read this guy?

The interest in the discussion with Abrams (the actual interviewee) is in the discussion of what happens when an alphabet (not cuneiform, not hieroglyphs, but phonetic letters) first arrives to a culture, how it impacts modes of thinking, regardless of whether it existed already elsewhere (which apparently it didn't before the Phoenicians). Remember, this is ancient times. Things move more slowly, places are more isolated and less in contact with each other.

.

[Stephen Morgan]

The interest in the discussion with Abrams (the actual interviewee) is in the discussion of what happens when an alphabet (not cuneiform, not hieroglyphs, but phonetic letters) first arrives to a culture, how it impacts modes of thinking, regardless of whether it existed already elsewhere (which apparently it didn't before the Phoenicians). Remember, this is ancient times. Things move more slowly, places are more isolated and less in contact with each other.

There had been intercontinental trade around for thousands of years by that time.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Sorry Mac, whatever else he's saying he's a neo colonialist eurocentric wanker with a hard on for the sound of his own voice.

I mean obviously language is magic and writing is also magic and, it uses symbols which are gateways into psyberspace in their own rite, but really what a bunch of paternalistic crap.

Sorry, I'll try and read it again later after I've mellowed out.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Specifically the "culture before writing" bit. Writing he doesn't recognise maybe, but Ausralian aboriginal art has language in it. Written language in thats its symbols that together have meaning. Yes they (pre writing cultures) tell oral stories, but they also paint, sing and dance and draw. There is thing called a message stick in Australia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_stick

Imagine if you spoke one language and wrote in another, and no one spoke in the written language but people who spoke different languages could write to each other clearly in it?

Trippy hey.

And none of this is to deny the fact that indigenous people did tell stories and map themselves onto the land. But they also wrote stuff using an another symbol system. I dunno how simple or complex it is cos I can't read it.

They also used images - both for communication of abstract ideas and for immediate communication of ideas - ie

this is how you kill and cut up this critter... points to painting in cave.

a year or two later

remember this picture of how to cut up this animal?

Its how we cut up this land, see this bit here, its ours... that bit there, thats your mums people, your people too, but your ours first. This means yoiu have rights to hunt here and (see that line along that bone, thats that ridge over there,) there cos of your dad and our territory and your mum and her peoples...

Etc etc

Similar things would have happened with Runes from northern Europe as they developed.

So I dunno. I'm struggling with this.

Honestly I think he's talking shit about indigenous people to support his worldview. He's talking about some false idea of pre writing cultures. As if symbology appeared magically with the invention of cuneiform or something.

For example this:

So, there's this kind of a loop, or reciprocity, that is basic to the human organism that gets interrupted, it would seem, when writing comes into a culture and people begin to enter into this reflexive loop with their own written signs.

Is true in that yes his head has disappeared up his arse and he has begun to talk shit, but its not cos of writing. Peoples heads were up their arses in pre literate cultures too. But maybe they didn't last as long. Its unreasonable to blame language and symbolism for his personal issues.

Again:

The land is left out of account and begins to seem superfluous, or perhaps as now, just a passive backdrop against which human history unfolds. Or, perhaps a passive set of resources for us to mine, mine up and use for our own purposes. It no longer has its own rich, inherent value and life on its own part.

This is not because of writing. Its because peoples heads are up their arses. Mining is good, if its done carefully and with a thought to whats actually happening. Mining oil may not be good in every case, nor how its done these days, but humans have always used stuff from in the ground. Rocks and stone tools are "mined", its just a minimal thing. That doesn't mean I think fracking is a good idea, or open cut mining or oil. But without stone, and metal and gases I wouldn't be here.

I'm typing on a computer on the internet FFS.

The sort of thing he's talking about comes cos people with power don't give a fuck about anything but themselves. Not because their ancestors discovered writing, tho I'm sure it contributed in other ways.

Fuck, nature doesn't stop speaking to you cos you learn to write.

It doesn't full stop.

If you can't hear it its cos you're not listening.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I couldn't find where I first heard [I mean read, but I do subvocalize] Burroughs talk [write!] about this, so this bit of Burroughs will have to do:

"The proposed language will delete these virus mechanisms and make them impossible of formulation in the language. This language will be a tonal language like Chinese, it will also have a hieroglyphic script as pictorial as possible without being too cumbersome or difficult to write. This language will give one option of silence. When not talking, the user of this language can take in the silent images of the written, pictorial and symbol languages."

http://fendersen.com/Electronic.htm

I always wondered if it was naive to think that a Chinese reader didn't (have to) subvocalize. Any Chinese readers around?

"Now we try using some of Mr. Hubbard's reactive mind phrases which are supposed in themselves to produce illness."

I've read that before but never noticed that bit ... I'm seeing scientology in a whole new light.

[The Hundredth Idiot]

"Fuck, nature doesn't stop speaking to you cause you learn to write"
^^
Indeed, I'll add this if I may:

Excerpt from "Story About Feeling" by Bill Neidjie:

"Listen carefully, careful
and this spirit he come in your feeling
and you will feel it...anyone that.
I feel it...my body same as you.
I telling you this because the land for us,
never change round, never change.
Places for us, earth for us,
star, moon, tree, animal,
no-matter what sort of a animal, bird or snake...
all that animal same like us. Our friend that.

This story e can listen careful
and how you want to feel on your feeling.
This story e coming through you body,
e go right down foot and head, fingernail and blood...
through the heart.
And e can feel it because e'll come right through.
And when you sleep you might dream something.

You might dream moon,
or you might dream water, storm.
You might dream tree, wind...

Oh anything e can dream...that dream e's true.
You having a sleep
but your spirit over there where you dream.
Daylight...e come back.

Now I telling story I can listen this.
You listen that wind e come more.
Tree e start moving round and feeling."

[Joe Hillshoist]

I was actually thinking about a particular bit of Big Bill Neidjie's art when I wrote those posts. Well art he repainted onto a rock. (As well as a few other things.)

Fully thinking about it, and him, tho I never met him.