Author: Nick Kempinski

We want larger than life stories to remember the simple things

I’ve gone off the beaten track for the past couple of posts. And it’s time to get back to Ong and his characteristics of oral cultures. And today, we’re going to look at

The noetic role of heroic ‘heavy’ figures and of the bizarre

In this, Ong focuses on the tall tale.

The absurd and larger-than-life heroes and characters, in oral cultures, aren’t as grandiose as they seem. Their extreme nature is normalized & memorized over time.

In fiction

It’s easy to see this in fiction, the larger-than-life images and situations we watch. With advancements in technology and CG, there is an almost infinite rabbit hole we can take ourselves.

For the longest time in our literate culture, books have held these grandiose images and stories. Then came the moving pictures. To me, it seems appropriate that some of the earliest attempts to catch our imaginations were centered around flying to the moon or robots and androids.

Most of the great stories have elements of the absurd, bizarre, larger-than-life characters and journey. They stick with you.

And not only that – they have an immediate word-of-mouth quality.

In a story with a million over-the-top moments and characters, when recounted and told to friends and family, if you miss a part, a feature, it still can captivate. The heart of the story travels, even if you don’t know exactly how big or green The Hulk is.

For fiction to be grandiose is expected. What’s really difficult to think about is what’s next: the “real” world.

In Fact

In 15-20 years, what will we remember about these past few years?

It might depend on how many fictionalized movies come out.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen an interesting trend that, I think, relates to this thought – the fictionalization of history.

Take a look at these two lists, biographical films and biographical mini-series. I smashed them together to get this.

We are creating & consuming our history more and more through infotainment.

Some could argue that this isn’t real history. That these fictionalized moments are outlandish, over-the-top, made for our viewing pleasure. But maybe at the root, that’s the point. Make history bizarre, outlandish, and grandiose, and maybe we’ll actually remember a nugget of truth?

I’ll admit, my napkin numbers may be reflective more about technology. That the cost to make TV and movies is decreasing, so that overall more content is made in general.

But as I think about it, does this really sway the thought? How many books are there fictionalizing history? Is the history that we learn (not the journalistic history of historians) all but a story?

Perhaps TV & movies, by their very nature, allow for the outlandish, bizarre, dramatized life for our viewing pleasure. They are designed to recreate larger-than-life moments “on the big screen,” which is kinda why we like it.

Now for the kicker

We take in all this over-the-top content, and over time, what happens?

The absurd and outlandish fade, and the nugget of a moral, thought, or feeling remains.

Ong doesn’t oppose this outlandish and bizarre, only that in oral cultures, it was more prominent. He even mentioned that in literature, this continues. However, it’s an artifact of an oral culture. It was heavily required for an oral society as a tool to normalize information through society over time.

The postliterate

The “heroic” heavy figure, the Ong notes, fades with literate culture. Over time there came the “anti-hero,” that “you do not need a hero in the old sense to mobilize knowledge in story form.”

I can’t entirely agree that there was always a heavy hero. In several storytelling traditions, more complex figures took center stage. Take the trickster, the raven, the coyote, Loki, Kaulu, Mercury, the Monkey King, and more.

Let’s look at the gods of Rome or the Norse – sure, magnificent and over the top with grand powers and bizarre and otherworldly experiences – yet flawed and almost human. They were, as Ong might call them, “heavy” figures, but all heroic? No.

How about the Indigenous peoples of North America whose, for lack of a better word, gods were animals and nature itself. “Heavy” figures? Yes. Heroic? Not all.

If Ong was right about needing a hero, though I disagree, perhaps in the postliterate the “heavy” figures are not an external hero, but ourselves. Celebrities taking the limelight. While the rest stage our lives to be bigger, to be more outlandish, to be more grandiose than they are. All with the idea to be seen, and maybe what’s harder to acknowledge, to be remembered.

Though, perhaps this is a transition? Maybe we’re stewing and creating the recipe to create a new set of Roman and Norse-like gods. People who may actually have been real at one point in time, only to have their lives made bizarre and over-the-top from some sort of common societal draw.

---

Photo by Robert Gourley on Unsplash

Originally posted on Substack

Old world relationships & social structures

When I originally set out thinking about the social implications of orality and the postliterate world, I immediately imagined a series of old-world relationships. Ones that still exist today, though maybe overlooked or under-utilized, or ones that may have been forgotten or no longer seemed “relevant.”

Here’s an example: how we sleep.

The lightbulb changed how we slept. It changed an entire part of society, and yet, somehow, we forgot.

Another example: the washroom.

Do you remember the racks and piles of magazines and gamebooks in the washroom? I have a few friends who have a couple of books still in the washroom – but between you and me, I think it’s more for decor and homage to their childhood than actual purpose. The iPhone altered what we did in there.

What have other aspects of everyday life been lost over time as we’ve introduced technology?

As we slide into the postliterate, my thinking is that those lost and forgotten pre-Gutenberg aspects and social structures might creep back into our lives. Imagine if, one day, light bulbs and phones stopped working. My feeling is we would start segmenting our sleep again and bringing back the washroom library.

So come with me and try to think of how society has changed between now and 1450, now further to the year 1000, 0, 100BCE, 1000BCE.

Like I do with my series of Ong’s characteristics of oral society, I’ll start throwing these thoughts out here as we go.

The very first is what I call:

The Master & The Apprentice.

This is a good first step in taking our minds to imagine what life might be like. It’s a relationship that we are all aware of. We call it different things depending on context and industry: student, resident, associate, apprentice, mentee. They may be formal or informal relationships.

Lawyers, Doctors, Artisans, and Trades have formally kept this tradition going and know how vital it is. These industries, and others that follow this process, are aware of a simple truth that our literate-dominated world sometimes forgets.

It’s not just information, but its application, the feeling of it, that is required for understanding, of knowledge.

The written word has detached the emotion and persona of those with knowledge. Imagine reading a manual about anything. Learning from literature alone is learning alone. It is your own voice in your own mind. It’s your own body imagining actions & movements performed.

What orality brings to a lesson, or thought, is the deep-rooted understanding that while you may not remember who said it – you remember it was someone else. Not you. And in that understanding come reverence and respect for the path of information. For the path of history. It’s not just off-hand recognition of Mastery, but the emotional understanding of where it came from. 

What does this mean for the future?

I’ve been building up to this idea that we won’t be “illiterate.” I think it will be more likely aliterate. We will still be inundated with information. Though, we might not care.

Yet, remember the literaty from a couple of weeks ago?

In our past, the Master has been the gatekeeper to knowledge and information. The image of the elder confounding the student with seemingly irrelevant tasks and exercises. Then came literacy, and the Master, still with irrelevant tasks, became the librarian with hordes of ancient texts piled high around them. Both of these images are intertwined with experience and age.

The challenge we’ve faced with Masters is that technology has shifted the control of information by reducing the cost to produce and distribute to almost free. It has made the time to gain information irrelevant. The speed of language has allowed the young to garner just as much information. What’s worse is that computers can even assimilate it faster than anyone.

And here’s where we’re starting to see the crack of information alone.

The new Master

The new Master is beyond data alone. New Masters, regardless of age, are arising as those that filter and navigate the infinite for answers. They use it as a foundation to gain insight, filter between folklore and truth, navigate and come out of the other end with true mastery. They are the embodiment of passion and drive for their industry and craft. 

Master Penman Jake Weidmann youngest of his kind; one of twelve existing today. In an act that was once standard, penmanship is no longer has a permanent place in school. It’s more a fascinating divergent lesson. A few chapters might be dedicated to the strange cursive writing style – pre-QWERTY.

Weidmann persisted. He uncovered and hunted for old techniques and then tried them himself. Filtering through fact and fiction for himself.

Lars Andersen an archer and disputed Master who is trying to navigate between fact and fiction of ancient methods in his craft. Is his underhand style new or re-invented? Some even dispute the materials he cites as his inspiration. They are hidden in legends and paintings. Yet, his mastery cannot be denied no matter how disputed.  It is faster than anything seen. Unlike the tried and tested mastery of Jake, Lars’ path is more obscure to uncover. 

What would it be like to have someone with this drive for mastery as a teacher? 

And what of the apprentice?

I think it’s understood that we’ve got a feeling that education needs change. The recent pandemic is challenging education even more. What to change, how to change?

Modern standardized tests turn children into widgets. Read book A, then book B. Put this piece with that and carry them down the conveyor belt. Spit them out like a new car. Products of industrialized education. Like the printed word in a press. Lather with ink, hang to dry and put it on a shelf to sell.

It’s more complicated, I’m sure.

Since the early 1900’s methods like Montessori, Waldorf, or democratic schools like Summerhill have for over a century tried to show our industrialized printing press method can’t work.

My feeling is that we have a sense of why our education system is challenged. In start-up terminology, we have an issue of “scale.” I think we know that the master-apprentice relationship is the best, that one on one individual attention and care is best – but the cost of one on one grows considerably as the system grows.

As orality continues to retake hold, perhaps solutions will become clearer. Perhaps we’ll see a larger influx of children taking on their parent’s trade or specializations starting sooner when a Master sees a child’s inclinations and invites them to join their school (would we go so far as a sorting hat?). Making more, and smaller more specialized schools. Broadening the scope of what a successful education looks like and achieves.

Guilds & Universities

And here is the next logical step from The Master & The Student. Where do they learn? Where did they learn? How do they continue to learn?

What used to be the institutions that supported the Master & Apprentice? Are there any that haven’t held well over time? Guilds?

But that’s for another day.

---

Photo by jose aljovin on Unsplash

Originally posted on Substack

Literacy will always have a place

Between the years 550 and 700, something interesting happened. With the fall of Rome, we stopped speaking and using Latin. What’s more, languages shifted and mutated in various parts of the world and by 700 the common person couldn’t speak it, nor did they have anyone in their lives that had any memory of it spoken. It was mostly dead.

Yet – one of the secret societies kept this language flourishing. Schools.¹

The knowledge amassed by the Roman Empire was so substantial, that to learn anything of substance, it was written in Latin. Schools really had no choice. And what a better way to keep it than to use it. But, outside their walls, there was no longer any particular use. It was a language for a single purpose – education.

The bonds of language

I doubt anyone can argue against the bonds created through language. They become deep and “societal” in nature.

Those that can speak Dothraki or Klingon; those First Nations that are working to keep their culture alive through language; those that program in C, Ruby, Python, PHP, etc…; those that can sign; those that… well I can keep going on.

I also doubt that anyone in the world is exempt from that “outsider” feeling when you are surrounded by a language you don’t understand. It’s humbling.

There’s a definitive line that’s made through the marriage of skill and culture.

The Academics

Did this Latin-only secret society, more than a millennia ago, help consolidate and foster today’s scientific community?

How language and the written word have built the academic community is an interesting thought. The cornerstone of dialogue is the “publication” of knowledge. The heated debate, arduous experimentation, visionary purpose comes down to the printing press. That’s, however, for later thought.

What I’m thinking of here – is in the language itself. The Latin that still exists, knowing its Latin name/form can define a guild of sorts. No different than knowing what a GIT repository is, or a P-trap, or an Octonion.

However, this isn’t anything new.

Some choose to learn, and some choose not to. But what if no one “cares” to learn anymore?

The Literaty

Perhaps calling them The Literaty is a bit extreme, but I feel appropriate.

Remember that side note from last week? That 15%? That’s important.

As we carry down the path into the postliterate, my belief is we will never become illiterate. We can’t ever go back. There will always be “stop” signs. There will always be light touches of language. Summaries to read: Coles, Cliff, Blinkist.

But the choice to go deeper into the written word, to read the truly complex, or just flat out long books. That’s what forms a new group.

The marriage of skill and culture. Those that choose to create and consume long-form content. The mix of skill and culture.

That 15%. They will walk among us knowing that outside of their walls – no one does it.

---

Photo by Frantzou Fleurine on Unsplash

Originally posted on Substack

1. The other interestingly was the church. But there’s more to the church’s usage, so let’s keep this with schools, shall we? ↩︎