Where was I? I’ve forgotten where I was in reflecting on Ong’s Psychodynamics of Orality with our current culture. So this recap is partly for me as it is you.
It was coined “secondary orality” because I don’t think anyone realized how close could it get to a primary oral culture?
In the thick of academia and logic, it’s hard to imagine. However, with recent events unfolding before our eyes, I think we’re realizing, perhaps it’s closer that we thought.
In, Ong’s, Orality & Literacy, I have to admit for me, “Agonistically toned” was one of the lesser argued characteristics. Perhaps it’s because his use of laser specific language; it’s name has more punch? It sure wasn’t the generic references to old plays and stories such as Iliad, Beowulf, and The Mwindo Epic.
What is agonistic?
Not agnostic. Not antagonist. To the dictionary!
2. Argumentative
3. Striving for effect
4. Relating to, or being aggressive or defensive social interaction between individuals usually of the same species 1
While “Argumentative” maybe a doomsday definition you may lean toward, it’s also “striving for effect.” What Ong continued to point out, is it is also about being boastful; peacocking and bloating chests.
Bragging about one’s own prowess and/or verbal tongue-lashings of an opponent figure regularly in encounters…
Based off the old plays, this may seem oddly over the top and, perhaps to literate society, could come across as “insincere, flatulent, and comically pretentious.”
Recently Agonistic
Rap battles are a great example of agonistic tone. Two rappers slinging saturated, insults at each other while making themselves larger than life. But what else in modern culture could be considered agonistically toned?
Here’s a quick list of other recent examples
Every “character” in a reality TV show
The more questionable Minecraft YouTube show hosts my son sneaks
Every Xitter post from it’s owner
The 45th, now, 47th US President-Elect
Good or Bad?
What I find interesting about this characteristic is, Ong, is careful not to say an oral culture is simply agonistic, but agonistically toned. Meaning that while they sounded agonistic, they may not physically be.
Reading Orality & Literacy, there is attention to stay unbiased, to have no opinion on better or worse between literate and oral culture. While others might exclude “tone” from the characteristic and go towards tribalism and the darker natures of our past coming back; while perhaps Ong had a personal opinion, he gently stays out of that fight.
Does a highly agonistically tonned society lead to agonistic behaviour2? Could there be a future where Agonism is everywhere?
Note: I’m not sure what “usually of the same species” has to do with anything. But sure, we’ll go with it. ↩︎
Ah… that explains the specific species language. Many of the studies are not on humans. ↩︎
With what’s happened this week in the US, I’m going to focus in on the next characteristic of an oral culture that I think fits the bill. While moments like these have many more moving parts and are much more complex, perhaps there’s something in this one that might be relevant.
I’ve talked about this before, but let’s use it in terms of Ong this time. In his characteristics of an oral cultures he calls this:
Situational rather than abstract.
Oral cultures tend to use concepts in situational, operational frame of reference that are minimally abstract in the sense that they remain close to the human lifeworld
In other words, abstract generalisations go out the window. Inference and logic are illogical. An oral mind will stay rooted in the here and now and won’t even entertain the idea abstraction.
What’s in front of them is the truth. Only what they’ve experienced is the truth. Trying to understand someone or something else is impossible and any exercise to go deeper is irrelevant.
I won’t group like you tell me
In Cognitive Development, It’s Cultural and Social Foundations by A.R. Luria, a fascinating read, they were able to study a pocket of preliterate society as it transitioned into literacy. They asked a lot of interesting questions to see what how they would answer.
Here’s one small example, Ong, outlined. When asking the participants to name shapes, they never used the general name of the shape, instead:
Circle were plates, sieves, moons
Triangles were amulets, fingernails, buckets
Squares were mirrors, doors, apricot drying boards
This study continues to ask them to group even more things: people, situations, trees – and time after time, they refused.
Here’s another test performed. Give someone 4 items ( pictures of the items ), and have them take one away based on any defined grouping
You try:
hammer – saw – log – hatchet
glass – saucepan – spectacles – bottle
bayonet – rifle – sword – knife
But what happened in the majority of cases, preliterate people didn’t, and wouldn’t, group these things with attributes, but by situation. And, they would either deffer, reject, or expand the situation to not exclude anything. Here’s an example of someone, given glass-saucepan-spectacles-bottle, who almost got there:
These three go together, but why you’ve put the spectacles here, I don’t know. Then again, they also fit in. If a person doesn’t see too good, he has to put them on to eat dinner
It wasn’t like they wouldn’t do the exercise, but something was in their mental process was blocking them; they couldn’t do the exercise.
It might then be no surprise what happens when you expand grouping to inferring.
Here’s a very, very simple inference.
If Bobs steals, and stealing is bad, Bob is bad.
To the literate mind, that logic tracks. However, an oral mind will buck up against the whole premise. An oral mind, like asking to group items, won’t even play along. It might even fight you saying “I don’t really know Bob, how can I judge?”
So what does all this have to do with what happened in the US?
Voting.
Voting requires ones ability to infer a candidate is good or bad. Voting requires the ability to create generalisations about someone, their behaviour, their history, their beliefs, to determine if the politician or party would serve your best interest in the future.
If someone looses the ability to make abstractions and generalisations, what happens?
For the most part, as you may have guessed, I’ve been arguing that we are returning to a mostly oral culture by saying we have the most of the characteristics. However, this is one where it doesn’t fully lock in for me yet; where technology and aliterate may divert, or perhaps still getting there. I’m going to try and further my stance that we are moving towards an oral society. But there are some big gaps here – it’s a work in progress; close, but maybe not close enough? You be the judge.
You know what you can recall: Mnemonics and Formulas
In an oral culture complex thoughts are tied to mnemonic trickery: trinkets and patterns, lyrics and rhymes; dances and body movements; sights and sounds; metaphors and stories. All those little rhymes your grandmother knows had a purpose.
In literate culture, technology offloads that knowledge into some device: a stone tablet, a book, a website. We don’t need any Mnemonics when we can now open a browser to, say “Hey Siri…” Perhaps the formula is knowing the right search terms? But that’s a very very loose argument.
Mnemonic or a Meme?
The whole point of a mnemonic device is to unravel a memory or knowledge. To use the device and share it with others to help them remember. It could be something simple and concrete: Never Eat Shredded Wheat ( North, East, South, West ), or Roy G. Biv ( a colourful dude playing piano on a rainbow ).
While perhaps they aren’t traditional mnemonics, we do have memes. Oh boy, do we have meme’s! You’ve seen them, understood them, or perhaps misunderstood them for a while now. “One does not simply” need a picture to understand. Also one does not simply need words either
Perhaps we’ve extended traditional mnemonics more than Ong could have imagined? We now have included a wealth of mediums, contexts and sub-context.
Original mnemonics require training, and shared background to unpack. Meme’s are no different. See how many unlock shared knowledge for you?
New phone, who ‘dis?
Keep calm and …
Netflix and chill
Yada yada
Bye, Felicia
Now, most meme’s are intended to provoke humor. Some might find them more social commentary, debating their use. Do meme’s help us remember quantum mechanics?
Outside of the Mnemonic/Meme, there was another passage in Ong’s explanation specifically about mnemonic training:
[An] interlocutor is virtually essential: it is hard to talk to yourself for hours on end. Sustained thought in an oral culture is tied to communication.
“So Eugene already had a leg up—an interlocutor could explain away any failed communication.”
a person who takes part in a conversation or dialogue.
a person who questions; interrogator.
So, with AI, we create a technological interlocutor. Needing to have a dialogue with a computer to retain knowledge. A single question in Google is no longer enough. Keywords are no longer enough. We are starting to need a conversation; dialogue, no matter how light or fallible it is right now, to retrieve knowledge.
How often do you ask Siri or use Copilot instead of a “classic” search?
Shaka, when the walls fell
I can’t go down this mental rabbit whole without making reference one particular episode of Star Trek. Whether you are a trekkie or not, there is one episode perfect for a communications geek like me, Damok. Which introduced the Tamarians, who speak only in metaphors and allegories.
Feel free to go down the wikihole, I have several times, and will likely again after I hit publish on this post. What I noticed immediately, was the almost visceral reaction to the oral nature of the thought experiment.
How could an oral society have advanced technology?
And that.. that right there, that sentiment, is what I believe to be the future catalyst for so much trouble.
Had a chat this week with a friend who’s been feeling that movies lately are feeling “over the top”. Like actors are “always on”. Could be, we’ve passed “that line” ( you know the old folks one where you get it, but you don’t get it ). Then we had a good chat about the new need for grandiose, heavy, and bizarre stories.
