Literacy

[clicketyclack]

The written word is a tool, and like many tools it can have its uses and its drawbacks. It can be used for oppression, or liberation.

i’m convinced, that like plenty of other tools, literacy is a tool that changes the way our mind works, and generally not for the better. can we use it to dismantle the master’s house? of course, but i definitely think that in the long run, it should be abandoned.

[green]

It seems to me literacy enables communication on levels that illiteracy can not.If I could not read or write this forum and even this whole computer would be worthless.I met a man in Canada years ago who was in his 50s and was illiterate.He lived in a remote part of the mountains and had just never been taught to read or write.He knew alot about living in the wood and had a pretty good life but regretted that he could not himself communicate with written word.

[chase]

Spell of the Sensous by David Abram(exellent book) makes a good case against phonetic writing, the argument being that it, like most abstract technologys, disconnects us from nature and empowers the illusion of a strictly human world. So PHUCK phonetic alphabets and learn to memorise like people did back in the day. That way knowlegde post-civ can evolve, not remain static till the books turn to dust. If need be, use pictograms with clear associations to nature.

What about clothing? Is that an abstract technology? It has certainly been argued against for alienating us from our surroundings, but are we really prepared to chuck it completely?
Ai hope that writing could be just another way of being a human animal, but ai would love to hear more critiques of it, in more detail. As well as what it could be usefull for. (exacting geneologies, anyone?)

[timeLESS]

It seems to me literacy enables communication on levels that illiteracy can not.If I could not read or write this forum and even this whole computer would be worthless.

Whatever this forum means to us in current context, we probably wished we wouldnt be on this forum in the first place? no computers and all that stuff doesnt really sound so bad does it?

Also i can imagine somewhat “rewilded” computers without phonetic literacy using iconography and binary just fine. we wouldnt be typing to eachother, but drawing.

I met a man in Canada years ago who was in his 50s and was illiterate.He lived in a remote part of the mountains and had just never been taught to read or write.He knew alot about living in the wood and had a pretty good life but regretted that he could not himself communicate with written word.

this seems to me to be about context. An illiterate man feels awkward in a more and more literate world. He probably did fine until the rest started using literacy to communicate. Shit, i would feel left out…

[timeLESS]

[quote=“chase, post:23, topic:801”]What about clothing? Is that an abstract technology? It has certainly been argued against for alienating us from our surroundings, but are we really prepared to chuck it completely?
Ai hope that writing could be just another way of being a human animal, but ai would love to hear more critiques of it, in more detail. As well as what it could be usefull for. (exacting geneologies, anyone?)[/quote]

I do not know the arguments against clothing, but it sounds a bit silly to me. Real world clothes (not the word clothes itself) arent abstract in any way. They hold themselves together stroking itching or encasing your skin. They alienate us as much from the world as the air around us alienates us from a rockformation a little over there. They are part of the world.

Thing is , letters and words arent abstract themselves. Words and letters have great animating power. It is the ideas that have arisen with phonetic literacy that are abstract. ideas that have no experential value for us and only conjure up our own notion of them in our heads.

If i draw a picture of a tree, you engage that picture. That picture tells you something. If i type the word “tree”. You conjure up some abstract image of a tree. whereas communication with the world can be lively and run both ways, now by using phonetic langauge we engage only ourselves, and the rest of the world falls mute.

im having a hard time typing this in english so i hope i make myself a bit clear.

take care

sorry for maybe sounding a bit rude above.

[Odineeus]

Just the other day, the son of my mom’s boyfriend who learns letters in school right now, slowly but surely becoming litterate, says ‘‘oh, oh, the cow can only say two letters! mø! m-ø!’’ (they call cow cries ‘‘mø’’ in norwegian)

If you think about this, i think you’ll come to at least one argument against litteracy. It kind of put a lot of things in place for me.

[clicketyclack]

What about clothing? Is that an abstract technology? It has certainly been argued against for alienating us from our surroundings, but are we really prepared to chuck it completely?

personally, i’m not against symbolic thought, and don’t believe that humans are the animals to have/use it. i do think that alphabetic literacy is a separate thing from other abstract technologies, like nest-building, and effects our minds in a different, more harmful way.

[RHex]

Seems to me that the abstractness of literacy is tied intimatly to the abstractness of our version of time… History is made by books, while dreamtime is made by stories.

“The shield of Ancheti was called the Big Shaker, and painted upon it was a likeness of the mudhopping bird. It was this bird that taught men writing, for it left mud marks which men first read as omens, later forming them into signs which could be read. They are not as ours, though men among us can read them.”

From the Kolbrin Bible, book of gleanings: death of Hurmanetar.