Writing is the Death of Knowledge

I think I'm still recovering from that last post. ...So...much...information... But in an attempt to press on, I will post about the next chapter in Maryanne Wolf's extremely well written and fascinating book, Proust and the Squid.

Chapter three is my favorite chapter so far. Up to this point, Ms. Wolf has hinted at what Socrates thought about the developing importance placed on reading and writing by the members of his ancient Athenian culture. Socrates is the ancient Greek philosopher of whom I sadly didn't know anything about before I started reading this book. (outside of the seminal early 90's teenage movie masterpiece: "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" all I thought of Socrates was a marble head in a museum...this is true people; I'm not proud of it...but it is true)

Socrates did not trust reading/writing. He was the inventor of...bum, bum bum!!! The "Socratic Method" - though I'm pretty sure that is not what he, himself, called it. He used the Socratic Method to challenge his students thoughts and presumptions about themselves and the society they lived in (ancient Athens). The reason he used it? To promote his absolute belief in the importance of leading an examined life and that through leading an examined life one will full fill one's highest calling as a human being...and, I assume, contribute to the betterment of society by thinking freely and resisting the status quo. Socrates thought out of the box. He was put on trial by his government and five hundred of his fellow citizens sentenced him to be executed because of it...for corrupting the minds of the youth in Athens...corrupting the minds of youth. I wonder if I could ever be convicted of that noble cause?

At his trial, Socrates famously said (as quoted by Ms. Wolf on page 71):
"If I tell you that this is the greatest good for a human being, to engage every day in arguments about virtue and other things you have heard me talk about, examining both myself and others, and if I tell you that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, you will be even less likely to believe what I am saying. But that's the way it is, gentlemen, as I claim, though it's not easy to convince you of it."

Yeah, he really said that. So by now we can all see, Socrates was a pretty cool and deep dude.

So what did Socrates, this great orator, the originator of Socratic method, the vile corrupter of young and fragile minds feel about reading and writing?!?...He despised it. He thought it was the murderer of the examined life and of any hope of acquiring internalized knowledge; true knowledge...Primary Discourse (?) with a very capital 'D' as the case may be...

He hated reading and writing (apparently he wasn't alone because I guess the majority of educated Greeks felt that written language was inferior to their oral traditions). As Martha Nussbaum is quoted "...[Socrates] believed that books could short-circuit the work of active critical understanding, producing a pupil who has a 'false conceit of wisdom' ". We'll get to that false conceit later, but damn it's good.

I don't even want to summarize with an essentially here...Ms. Wolf breaks down Socrates disdain for the written word to three points, which she discusses rather effectively. --Seriously folks, pages 69-78, the parts of this book about how Socrates felt about reading and writing are worth the price of admission alone--.

1. The inflexibility of the written word.
2. The written word's act of destroying the importance of memory.
3. The loss of control over language.

The first I'll touch on briefly. Socrates did not like that when you read something in a book, you can't actively engage in an argument with that book...the book won't argue back (who knows, maybe it does because I know when I read that I started to have an argument inside my head that went back and forth for a while..."ahh, yes words don't argue back, but wait what if they do? I mean, I'm having an argument right now, holy crap, I am having an argument right now, but wait who am I arguing with? the book or my self? I don't know. Is this an argument too or am I starting to loose focus?...etc...) But Socrates liked to do argue, it was the basis of the Socratic method...to question and answer and question and answer and question and answer and question...with the emphasis on question because there always was another one of those. And each answer lead to further refining of the discourse...or Discourse...and back to the beginning: The inflexibility of the written word.

The second, I think is profound. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. It tickles me. It makes me want to cry. It is absolutely insane. Remember how I blogged (ooh, a verb) earlier that by choosing to read, we are actively re-wiring our brains to accomplish that task? Well, Socrates came from a tradition that didn't do that. He came from a tradition that had an extremely complex set of techniques, "mnemotechniques", to help a person memorize and recite VAST amounts of information. When I say vast, I'm talking oceans here. People are memorizing freakin' Homer's Odessey here...and more. And by memorizing that information, people are internalizing it...digesting it...enabling themselves to contemplate and analyze it. The act of memorization puts a great value on deep, contemplative thought. Which is really freakin' interesting because if we telescope to our society. The mighty USA, 2010. We don't memorize much of anything (well at least I don't and I think I'm pretty average and like the bulk of society on this one here). How many of us remember our ten most frequently called freinds' telephone numbers? Much less an entire book? Much less a single paragraph within an entire book? And that leads back to his statement of "false conceit of wisdom". We certainly read a lot of stuff; a LOT of stuff. But how much have we internalized? How much do we chew on and digest and...I think I'll stop with that metaphor...but I find myself agreeing with this "false conceit of wisdom". And what Ms. Wolf does is she extends this concept of lack of wisdom to our digital age and hints, doesn't really argue yet (though I think she will towards the end of the book) that with our digital age we are not only reading words but we are seeing images and hearing sound bites and being fed VAST (there's that word again) amounts of information...but how much of it is actually giving us wisdom? How much of it is being refined. I mean hell, I don't remember what was on the news this morning on Yahoo! and I'm plugged in all the time. I'm constantly checking that website to see what is going on next in Fergie's rich and famous lifestyle.

But you know what? A lot of people think that by focusing on reading and not on memorization (zooming back to the Greeks here) the Greeks enabled themselves to enter a cultural "golden era"; their Classical and Hellenistic periods when art and architecture and I assume drama and writing were at their peaks, are going on precisely when Socrates was teaching and precisely when there is a big shift happening from an oral (memorized) tradition to a written and read one. The argument goes that by creating an alphabetic writing system that focuses on the sounds they made as opposed to symbols to represent objects, the Greeks became incredibly efficient thinkers. They only had to remember thirty-some odd sounds as opposed to thousands of abstract images. And by learning not only to read and write as opposed to memorize, but to do so alphabetically, they enabled themselves...the argument goes...to enter a stage of extreme creativity. They freed up mental capacity. They allowed their brains to no longer focus on memory and enable it to focus on creative thinking...

But I don't know. As much as I am seduced by that line of reasoning, I don't really buy it. I'm skeptical. I think that argument is more of an argument by people who place a MASSIVE importance on an alphabetic language versus a logosyllabic language (pictures). Think western vs. non-western society here. I think it is an argument that is largely based on prejudices...the Chinese and Japanese have enormously complex reading and writing systems and they have incredibly creative societies...just look at their art, architecture...everything...And besides, it was the very same Greeks who learned to value memorization who developed an alphabetic writing system for transcribing their knowledge in the first place.

But, to get back to Socrates here (I'm almost done, I promise). I think his focus on the lose of deep thinking is extremely interesting. Because, when I think of it, I don't think our society, a society that has read and writ for generations upon generations values deep thinking much. We value NEW thinking. And perhaps new thinking is more a product of reading a writing. What, if anything, are we sacrificing?

A few closing thoughts: Socrates third objection is almost amusing to me: The loss of control over language. He was afraid that once something is written down, there is no controlling who gets to read it. There's no controlling who has access to the knowledge. Socrates was put to death for spreading dangerous thinking or knowledge, yet he was afraid of how writing/reading could spread thinking/knowledge even further; beyond his control.

A great irony in all this: we only know what Socrates said because his protege, Plato wrote it all down for us to read.

And now (i can't resist):




And (I love this) the amazing Black Eyed Peas featuring Fergie and flashmob: