#orality

  • Once a rock always a rock?

    Once a rock always a rock?

    Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it never was.

    In the world of ecology, things are never the same, only evolving. In my intro to this project, I talked about the story of the wolves of Yosemite. 14 wolves had amazingly positive results, but is Yosemite’s ecology the exact same as it was before everything when south? No. It can never be.

    And this is the underlining principle of – once you go literate, orality is gone forever. You can never go back. All the thought leaders are conscientious when they use “orality” after the written word. They get very intricate in their choices of words and phrases: primal orality, oral sensibilities, oral residue, postliterate.

    Lately, in my mind, I’ve begun to think about orality and literacy in a geological sense. Imagine Orality and Literacy in an ever-evolving process of erosion and sedimentation. Mixing to make different forms. Never again the original form. Requiring a lot of time and energy to mutate.

    So, of course, it’s not orality, in the truest sense. The academics are spot on to avoid the word. On the other side, my non-academic says – stop your fancy words! It’s a rock.

    To the laymen, it’s a rock, a cloud, a tree. For the masses to truly take on a concept, I feel we need a generic “word.” For all the colours of the rainbow, the average person still can say red, blue, green. I want orality to have the same understanding.

    But Orality doesn’t generalize.

    However…. this is where my literate mind starts having a small temper tantrum.

    I’ve been struggling with an interesting and challenging thought. In purest orality, in what I’ve been reading, there are no generalizations. The ability to create a group of “X” goes out the window.

    Everything has a unique and contextual quality void of the need for broad strokes. It’s no wonder why we wonder why there seem to be countless names of the same animal in different phases of life, why there could be 12 words for rain or snow in some cultures. It may be because, in an oral culture, it was unique and required a name unto itself, specific for the context.

    And with this in mind, dialects and the history of language variations start to make a bit more sense.

    In my pride of pattern recognition, when I create a view of my world, it’s worse than never the same again, it was never all the same in the first place.

    What does this mean?

    Simply put, fragmentation. More fragmentation in meaning. More fragmentation in thought. Worse yet, overlapping and unrelated fragmentation of the same things. Different intent and “meaning” for the same thing.

    As technology has been advancing, I think some of this fragmentation is occurring naturally. We’re losing our ability to put things into buckets. It’s dividing and amalgamating— erosion and sedimentation. Here are a few examples:

    • Is Facebook part of the medium of the internet, or a medium unto itself? How do we categorize it across devices? Is Facebook on your phone the same as a browser?
    • What is a podcast? What is this clubhouse app? What is social audio, and what makes these things “different” than audio experiences before?
    • When twitter does roll out their “spaces” to everyone… what does that make them?

    Bye-bye generalizations. What’s more interesting is your Youtube might not be my Youtube. Now imagine that for everyday words like “bank,” or “book,” or “spoke.” The same word – different connotations with unique contextual awareness for each.

    I imagine the fragmentation is going to increase. But unlike previous geographical divisions, it will be a reflection of our community, or probably more like an amalgamation of communities, within this global village.

    Here’s one last example you need to ponder and maybe ask your friends:

    Question: What book did you last read?
    Question 2: Did you actually “read” it, or was it an audiobook?


    Photo by Matthew Kosloski on Unsplash

    Originally posted on Substack

  • The rules are changing

    A coming of age and some insight into the past


    Why should you care about orality?

    This has been a tough question for me. After all, if I can’t answer this, then to put it lightly, what’s the point?

    And then, when talking it out with someone recently, I made a connection.

    Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

    It’s been a couple of weeks, and the chaos that we watched in the United States seems to be dissipating. However, there is still a vast divide that needs to be overcome.

    The rules are changing.

    I’ve brought up Ong and the Cognitive Development study – and at the root, if our oral sensibilities are increasing – the fundamentals of logic change. And if the fundamentals change, the rules of debate change.

    And if you have someone with more literate sensibilities arguing with someone with oral sensibilities? You might as well be speaking a different language. Until we learn what these real differences are, everyone will be yelling into deaf ears on either side.

    I bring up the United States because I wonder if that’s at play in some part of the conflict. Two groups with drastically different sets of rules of debate. The arguments are incomprehensible by the opposition.

    It’s a coming of age story.

    There’s this phrase that I keep hearing over and over, “Yes, but this is new!” In some sense, sure. But in a lot of senses, I don’t think so.

    What I’m wondering is, is this a coming of age story? Are the arrogant teenagers of countries simply taking a step closer to understanding our elders in terms of societies and culture? Putting on suites to go into the world’s workforce and making adult decisions with all the nuances and complexities that only an older society could comprehend.

    I feel it when I leave North America ( Canada for me ). The moment I land in Heathrow, the land, the culture, the cities feel “older” than mine. History seeps out from the walls. No matter how new-aged or foreign, there’s a sense of history for me. And maybe this history comes from these times older than I can comprehend.

    And perhaps with the age of civilization, there is more diversity in sensibilities, oral, literate, other? Or perhaps more relevant examples of when their country was oral? After all, in our “western” history, our North American “countries” have never experienced this, because after all – they didn’t exist in the post-classical ( 400-1500 BCE ) hay day that the rest of the world has.

    Yes, that was a lot of “quotations” there – mainly in recognition of the cultures that were here before all of this – and those cultures struggling today, I feel have a better sense of what’s going on. Maybe one day we’ll learn to be quiet and listen to them.

    My point is, just like teenagers and adults do – we fight over the plight of something new and something old. Throw away what our elders know to only come around in the end and realize both are right.

    Classic rules?

    So if all of this battle is a coming of age, then there are rules to how. And in understanding oral cultures before we will take that step to a solution. I suggest that we all brush off our communication skills in “rhetoric” – you do have those, right? 😬

    You may have noticed that I posed the subtitle as a question – not a statement. It wasn’t a typo.

    While I feel we should brush up and learn more pre-medieval rhetoric – there is also what I think maybe a gap in history, and I’m starting to look to learn more about it—that of the commoner.

    The printing press lowered the barrier of entry into literacy and the written word. Before then, however, it was incredibly high. So high that only a percentage of a percent had access or the wherewithal to be trained or hire trained people. And so what we really know might be skewed to the elite. We have movies about Royalty and knights, about emperors or “previous” lords cast into slavery – but what do we really know about the common man, woman, or child? What persuaded the peasants, serfs, or the freemen in medieval times? What do we know about their sense of debate and logic? How did they debate and come to a common-sense amongst themselves?

    I remembered once being told that while we can make many assumptions and inferences from Shakespearan times, like what the common population was interested in being entertained by, we actually know very little. It wasn’t a real representation of the masses. In sad honesty, it didn’t matter: fear, torment and survival were.

    I hope that’s not where we go again. I hope we get through this postliterate hiccup all intact. If I have a nugget of a provable theory here, there’s some bit of insight into this literacy/orality division that once was.


    Originally posted on Substack

  • Non binary

    Non binary

    Orality is fluid; so are we.

    Last week I introduced Walter J. Ong and my first comparison with his characteristics of oral cultures. The power in the choice of a pronoun.

    And this leads me to a perception of what could be a characteristic of a literate culture

    Binary thought

    McLuhan, Postman, Ong, and I’m sure others, have looked at the ecology of the written word and quickly seen its influence on our logical nature. It’s not a far leap to see how literacy and math, science, law progressed together.

    Yet in this ability, is a simple mental foundation. Until recently our technological mountain has been composed of this smallest foundation. True (1) and false (0). On (1) and off(0). Is (1) and isn’t (0).

    After all – a word is or isn’t printed on a page. It is or isn’t in paragraph 3 subsection 4. It was or was not successfully reproduced. 1+1 is or is not 2.

    We tend to think lately that our capacity and attention has whittled down to almost nothing. It might be true. Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death shows us the legal & political celebrity & prowess in the early days of the United States; their once staggering high literacy rates combined with the public’s ability to keep up with and even enjoy hours of complex debate & deliberation.

    On the flip side of literacy, I recently read Cultural Development: It’s Cultural and Social Foundations by A.R. Luria, a fascinating opportunity to collect insight into a changing subculture as it transitions into literacy. And it shows cracks in human thought, that with Oral cultures, the fundamentals of logic changes. It’s not that there isn’t any, it’s just not the same.

    Inference goes out the door.
    Reasoning becomes cluttered with complexity.
    Perception itself becomes void of classification.

    Perhaps it’s not so Binary. Perhaps how we categorize, or logically organize our world is up for review.

    And how interesting that now, as we delve into quantum computing we are opening our thoughts to “maybe”, “maybe not” and “maybe both.”

    The diversity of a Roman

    I think this picture is amazing. Look at it with me. A designer used AI and photoshop to give details back to the busts of Roman emperors

    What I think is relevant to binary thought – are any preconceived notions of a Roman.

    If our category, inference, definition, and judgment are based on a literate characteristic of binary thought, how we are trying to define life or imagine history might be as well.


    Photo credit: Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

    Originally posted on Substack

  • Who’s Ong?

    Walter J. Ong: Orality and Literacy

    I’ve already introduced you to McLuhan. Now, let’s introduce you to another figure that’s currently shaping my perspectives. Walter J. Ong.

    How he influence the conversation of “Orality”? His work is foundational. While I still have to get into his more history-based works, his main focus was in a small pocket of time in human history, the transition from Orality into Literacy. Hence one of his seminal works Orality and Literacy.

    But, Nick, is this a religious thing?

    Ah, you noticed what he was wearing in the picture did you? I did say that, didn’t I? While he may be an American Jesuit priest, at no time while reading Orality & Literacy did I ever get the sense of religion.

    So sure, his specific curiosity may have been triggered by religion. I can only speculate it’s not a large hop skip and a jump to wonder if it was sparked around the effect missionary work had on an oral society. How at the heart of his religion was, in a sense, literacy. But that’s where we mostly stop.

    Compassion of orality

    I say mostly because with Ong, perhaps his religion helped, but nowhere yet in my readings, have I felt any portrait of superiority between literacy and orality.

    Which seems against what I’ve found from my informal conversations. From my discussions, so far, when I even suggest a post-literate oral culture is emerging, I seem to hit this wall. “Well, I know how to read!”

    Maybe?

    Where I’m going is, that as we go on this ride, I do not want to suggest any sort of inferiority or superiority between literate and oral. They are merely different. And that difference changes our minds which in turn changes our perceptions of each other and the world we live in.

    I realize now, my first post, may have been suggestive of this backslide, talking of tribal darkness. I think I might have to rectify that in future posts.

    Back to it

    Where were we… oh yes, what does Ong have to do with Orality… everything.

    He coined the term “Secondary Orality” mainly orality steeped in literacy. TV & Movies start with a script. But somewhere it gets a little twisted and muddled when written feels spoken. It’s a fancy term you can use at a cocktail party when discussing slang, emojis, tweets ( micro-blogging ), memes, and other oral-like text.

    But the main pièce de résistance is his characteristics ( psychodynamics ) of an oral culture. It’s a pillar in everything. While there is debate, he devised a series of traits in oral cultures. I’m not going to list all of them all right now because well… spoilers, however, if you really want, Wikipedia has a decent list.

    What I will do, is leave you with a teaser of what I want to do throughout this project. What if we re-examine society today against the characteristics of an oral culture? What do you think we would find?

    Here’s the first of many:

    Sounded Word As Power and Action

    The very first is a topic Ong tackles is an oral cultures association of words and power. Every Tolkien-like fantasy story has an elemental knowledge of this. Know someone’s “true” name, and have power over them. Or better yet, read The Name of the Wind, a good fantasy book if I do say so myself.

    In the non-fictional world, for some traditions & cultures, it’s a source of deep connection. Used sparingly. A way to declare family, special relationships, or sacred moments.

    Outside of these oral traditions, there has been a resurgence of re-appropriating words. Derogatory slang is taken back as empowerment.

    Currently, one of the most powerful examples of a cultural rekindling that sounded word has power, and one I believe we’re “feeling” is a re-appropriation and a declaration, that of the pronoun.

    Imagine the neuropathways in the human mind learning and changing.

    How amazingly beautiful!


    Originally posted on Substack

  • What is Orality?

    Good question

    Since I’m going to say the word a lot, we might as well set the ground rules around it, eh? ( yes, I’m Canadian )


    “the quality of being oral or orally communicated”

    – the dictionary

    That’s it.

    Think of it as the verbal version of literate. I tried to play with language around all of this, and as you can see, it doesn’t seem to always pan out…

    Literal : Oral
Literary : Oratory
Literacy : Orality
Literate : ???

What is the oral equivalent of literate?

[ Given, I think verbal is the comprehension of words both oral and literal. That "said", it seems to be muddled a bit ]
    Literate : Oralite???

Let's try it in a sentence: "Literates and oralites have fundamental differences in what is considered 'logic'"

Meh…

    but you get the gist, right?

    So what’s the big deal?

    The deal is when you see how the word is being used. It seems to have a good amount of baggage. Baggage that I’m going to ask you to throw away.

    Like religious baggage. Looking over Twitter’s #Orality,  from what I can tell, some use it when referring to the art form of a sermon and preaching, and some use it when discussing bringing the bible to the illiterate.  While there could be overlap with religion – I will not mean anything religious when I use the word.

    Then the academic baggage. A few of the “big wigs” (Harold Innis, Eric Havelock, Marshall McLuhan, and Walter J. Ong) have determined Orality and Literacy are in total opposition. These worlds were exclusive. Ong added some nuance defining terms like “oral residue” (yuck) or primal morality. He tried to give some complexity, but in the end, they felt you lost your orality the moment you became literate. All said and done, this also, is not what I mean.

    I believe it’s not as cut and dry. Like introverts and extroverts, it’s more fluid. Non-binary ( ooo I’ve got a thought around that too ).

    Fortunately, in later years there have been more arguments supporting my current use and belief of Orality.

    “orality is not what is spoken, but what allows one to speak.”

    Donald Wesling and Tadeusz Slawek, Literary Voice: The Calling of Jonah, 159

    The same could be said that literacy is not what is written, but what allows one to read.

    It’s a skill. Perhaps, once learned, becomes more…

    Right, and…

    So where I’m going to be going? Orality and an oral mind make a big difference in our world in ways I’m not sure we fully understand.


    Originally posted on Substack

  • The dark side of McLuhan’s Tribal Man

    The dark side of McLuhan’s Tribal Man

    Does the Global Village have a few dark alleys?

    If you don’t know McLuhan’s theory, here’s my super-duper simplified a-little-too-much version of it:

    Around 1964, McLuhan theorized that as technology advanced it would become a digital central nervous system of information connecting all media like our physical central nervous system connects our senses.

    In this connectivity, mankind will revert back to an oral society, back to a time of Villages — but this time a Global Village. In turn, it would rekindle us back to a tribal-like life.

    Now to break it down:

    Yes, his central nervous system theory was a prediction of the Internet. Usually, the mic drops here, we stop.

    But wait, there’s more.

    His Global Village is happening everywhere. It’s in every craft beer you drink, every food truck you eat at, pop up shop you buy a bar of elderflower artisanal soap from; every digital nomad you meet; every tattoo and piercing; every lumber-sexual you see drinking an Old Fashioned variant with locally source gin or whisky.

    What does an oral society have to do with all of that?

    The underpinning of most of McLuhan’s theories is how we interacted with a medium is far more important than its content. It changes us by interacting with it. The radio dial and transistors; understanding that invisible waves can transmit voices through the air; using the theatre of the mind to pretend that the announcer is talking just to you. All of this is more important than how captivating the content is.

    The medium is the message

    How does media make lumber-sexuals? It’s the consequences of how your brain rewires itself slightly when interacting with a medium.

    The dominant medium of choice can influence how your mind works, in essence, your thoughts.

    Back to the Lumber-sexual thing.

    Orality.

    Yup – there’s that word again

    Story Telling. Oral Traditions. Great grandmothers teaching grandmothers a recipe. Learning a childhood lesson through a bedtime fable. The sound of someone else’s voice as you remember what you’ve learned. It rings with a sense of history.

    McLuhan referred to this oral time and the time of the Tribal Man. And like the term Tribal, a sense of history comes. The exploration of it — asking yourself, when Mom said she was drinking an “Old fashioned” what was that? When Dad was showing me a picture telling me about camping — what was up with the mustache and toque? How would I look with a mustache and toque?

    And the exploration of history deepens:

    • How did my grandfather make moonshine?
    • My grandparents sold their own butter to make ends meet. How can I do that?
    • Every tattoo is a story to tell; a visual history of your life.

    Sure — this isn’t the exact same. Our current Orality is driven more through digital channels, but it’s still word of mouth.

    The craft and artisanal resurgence are nice and all, I’m a huge sucker for that scene, but with the latest wave of Xenophobic-like politics happening in the US & UK, I’ve started wondering, is Orality a part of it?

    What are our darker tendencies when we are Tribal?

    If you’ve traveled as I have, you have walked into a place you shouldn’t have been. All eyes staring up at you wondering who you were, asking themselves “What is this stranger doing in here? Don’t they know better?”

    Now imagine going farther back in time. What happens to that situation in a more primitive world: Slavery. Salem witch hunts. North America’s genocidal colonization. Farther. Holy Wars. Dark Ages. Roman Conquest. Genghis Khan. Vikings. Farther.

    Humanity has a history before the written word of being fiercely loyal and territorial, perhaps to a fault: racism, religious wars, family feuds escalated to extremes causing neighbours to kill. Our history is full of a darker side when anyone mentions “protecting our own.”

    Oh did I bury the lead… McLuhan said so himself …

    McManus: But it seems, Dr. McLuhan, that this tribal world is not friendly.

    McLuhan: Oh no, tribal people, one of their main kinds of sport is butchering each other. It’s a full-time sport in tribal societies.

    McManus: But I had some idea that as we got global and tribal we were going to try to — — 

    McLuhan: The closer you get together, the more you like each other? There’s no evidence of that in any situation that we’ve ever heard of. When people get close together, they get more and more savage, impatient with each together….The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.

    If you can get past that part and watch the rest – I think it will also help with where I’m going. Though – take out the old man complaining about the young wippersnappers.


    Originally posted by me on Medium; then on Substack