Listening now. There was something you pointed out but I missed the first time, was the observation that having a smaller vocabulary due to reliance on memory tends to make language metaphorical and symbolic, make each word much more pregnant with meaning. Once you have many precise words, each word itself has less and meaning and significance. It’s almost as if we lose the ability to feel the depths of words and their metaphorical significance.
Yes. And we lose sight of the fact that, as McGilchrist notes, all knowledge is ultimately metamorphical (ie. knowledge begins and ends in us observing similarities and differences between things)
The following is not at all to the main point of your discussion, but it occurred to me about 10 minutes in.
Greek of the late dark age/early Archaic period* was the first 'vowelised', fully 'alphabeticised' written language (interesting that the Greek script came from vowelless semitic Phonecian -> our word phonetics and related). Maybe the character of early written Greek speaks of the primacy of the aristocratic warrior in early Iron Age European society, as opposed to the priest-directed palace societies of the Magian near east, with their mystery religions.
The omission of vowels from Bronze Age Near Eastern scripts might reflect the fact that the reader was always a priest, or at least an initiate from the secular ruling caste. Only individuals belonging to these castes were ever, or ever *intended to be*, 'oriented to the text'. The felaheen (and the fighting man, to the extent that he was anything other than a fellah temporarily in arms) were nothing.
Iron and later Bronze Age European societies were ruled by warrior kings, not priests. They were more permeable, more horizontal (at the elite level) and less in thrall to priestly power. Their religions were accordingly less obscure, less esoteric, more accessible, more 'democratic'. Maybe the 'vowelfullness' of Greek and later European scripts reflects the relative openness (sorry for using the word but you know what I mean) of the European social order.
...I really do mean *maybe*...
Partly of course this difference is an artifact of pure function: the Mycenaean Greek of linear B used, consistent with its purpose, a vowelless near eastern palace-economy bean-counter script, whereas Homer is anything but an exercise in accounting. But contemporary Arabic and Hebrew--the latter even in its revived secular form--notably retain vowelless scripts.
The rest of your discussion was fearlessly exploratory (as a Guardian reader might say) but I'd have to listen again at least once more to be able to say anything relevant about it.
...other than maybe this:
You mention LOTR, which (I mean the book, not the dumb films) is full of open-endedness and underexplanation, hinting at but never revealing the mysterious and the numinous. However, I never get the sense that Tolkien means to position himself as the omniscient author purposely hiding things from the reader. Rather it seems as though they are mysterious also to Tolkien himself.
In other words, LOTR is a myth and a folktale as much in *how* it's told (ie the lack of self-projection on the part of the storyteller) as in *what* it tells. This is almost a lost art.
Good discussion. Writing is no different in essence from other technologies: it starts by taking some of the strain from human virtues and ends up causing them to atrophy. It's just had thousands more years to do its damage than more recent technologies (though the 'hyperliteracy' of the modern era is truly unprecedented). I'm not sure we need to forget it, but we certainly need to start exercising the withered muscles of collective memory.
The stuff on deconstructing myths is food for thought as well. Arguably the type of mind most susceptible to manipulation and propaganda is not one in the grips of a myth (for this, like any trope, can be applied to life in different ways), but one that has its core mythology wiped and replaced with every new intellectual fad. Redpill addicts take note.
Compelling but bleak to consider the implications here. Thankfully, Johann offers a hint of an antidote towards the end - "I suspect that whatever answer there is, it'll involve separation and protection from the deconstructive mechanisms that have wrought chaos so far. So, I mean, if you look at, for example, the Lord of the Rings, that doesn't even make an attempt at a truth claim. There's no... assertion that any of the characters were real characters, but nevertheless it is intended to be a myth with meaning for the English people. And so that's a kind of interesting protection against deconstruction."
I just paused at 43 min to share this: The high mountains of Albania and Montenegro may be the last remnant of a, somewhat, living oral epic tradition in Europe.
Lord Byron mentioned them in passing. The "Ghoslar" or "Lahut", as they call the rhapsodes in this part of the Balkan, still compose and improvise around immemorial folk themes, clanic feuds and, of course, great martial events. During the 20th century it must have been a fascinating discovery for scholars to witness, in rudimentary inns, during those long winter nights, these men surrounded by rough shepherds on their transhumance, reciting thousand-year-old words by the fireside.
Thank you both of you for this cure of intellectual elevation you gave us.
May the Muses, once again, walk on the land of Man!
Listening now. There was something you pointed out but I missed the first time, was the observation that having a smaller vocabulary due to reliance on memory tends to make language metaphorical and symbolic, make each word much more pregnant with meaning. Once you have many precise words, each word itself has less and meaning and significance. It’s almost as if we lose the ability to feel the depths of words and their metaphorical significance.
Yes. And we lose sight of the fact that, as McGilchrist notes, all knowledge is ultimately metamorphical (ie. knowledge begins and ends in us observing similarities and differences between things)
This is a deep and interesting discussion.
The following is not at all to the main point of your discussion, but it occurred to me about 10 minutes in.
Greek of the late dark age/early Archaic period* was the first 'vowelised', fully 'alphabeticised' written language (interesting that the Greek script came from vowelless semitic Phonecian -> our word phonetics and related). Maybe the character of early written Greek speaks of the primacy of the aristocratic warrior in early Iron Age European society, as opposed to the priest-directed palace societies of the Magian near east, with their mystery religions.
The omission of vowels from Bronze Age Near Eastern scripts might reflect the fact that the reader was always a priest, or at least an initiate from the secular ruling caste. Only individuals belonging to these castes were ever, or ever *intended to be*, 'oriented to the text'. The felaheen (and the fighting man, to the extent that he was anything other than a fellah temporarily in arms) were nothing.
Iron and later Bronze Age European societies were ruled by warrior kings, not priests. They were more permeable, more horizontal (at the elite level) and less in thrall to priestly power. Their religions were accordingly less obscure, less esoteric, more accessible, more 'democratic'. Maybe the 'vowelfullness' of Greek and later European scripts reflects the relative openness (sorry for using the word but you know what I mean) of the European social order.
...I really do mean *maybe*...
Partly of course this difference is an artifact of pure function: the Mycenaean Greek of linear B used, consistent with its purpose, a vowelless near eastern palace-economy bean-counter script, whereas Homer is anything but an exercise in accounting. But contemporary Arabic and Hebrew--the latter even in its revived secular form--notably retain vowelless scripts.
Eh ok I will keep listening...
I'm in no position to judge the viability of this theory but enjoyed your explanation, so thank you
Ha me neither
The rest of your discussion was fearlessly exploratory (as a Guardian reader might say) but I'd have to listen again at least once more to be able to say anything relevant about it.
...other than maybe this:
You mention LOTR, which (I mean the book, not the dumb films) is full of open-endedness and underexplanation, hinting at but never revealing the mysterious and the numinous. However, I never get the sense that Tolkien means to position himself as the omniscient author purposely hiding things from the reader. Rather it seems as though they are mysterious also to Tolkien himself.
In other words, LOTR is a myth and a folktale as much in *how* it's told (ie the lack of self-projection on the part of the storyteller) as in *what* it tells. This is almost a lost art.
Good discussion. Writing is no different in essence from other technologies: it starts by taking some of the strain from human virtues and ends up causing them to atrophy. It's just had thousands more years to do its damage than more recent technologies (though the 'hyperliteracy' of the modern era is truly unprecedented). I'm not sure we need to forget it, but we certainly need to start exercising the withered muscles of collective memory.
The stuff on deconstructing myths is food for thought as well. Arguably the type of mind most susceptible to manipulation and propaganda is not one in the grips of a myth (for this, like any trope, can be applied to life in different ways), but one that has its core mythology wiped and replaced with every new intellectual fad. Redpill addicts take note.
Compelling but bleak to consider the implications here. Thankfully, Johann offers a hint of an antidote towards the end - "I suspect that whatever answer there is, it'll involve separation and protection from the deconstructive mechanisms that have wrought chaos so far. So, I mean, if you look at, for example, the Lord of the Rings, that doesn't even make an attempt at a truth claim. There's no... assertion that any of the characters were real characters, but nevertheless it is intended to be a myth with meaning for the English people. And so that's a kind of interesting protection against deconstruction."
Paul Kingsnorth's Savage Gods engages with some of these ideas as well.
Will have to check out
Discussions related to this can be Derrida and his Grammatology; and also McLuhan's Gutenberg galaxy; this video can be useful: https://youtu.be/DQEAtFcvyXw?si=NyIj2HdaNGtj9PvG
Thanks for this! Ong cites McLuhan quite a bit
Looking forward to this one gentlemen.
Hope you enjoy Aleksandar!
I just paused at 43 min to share this: The high mountains of Albania and Montenegro may be the last remnant of a, somewhat, living oral epic tradition in Europe.
Lord Byron mentioned them in passing. The "Ghoslar" or "Lahut", as they call the rhapsodes in this part of the Balkan, still compose and improvise around immemorial folk themes, clanic feuds and, of course, great martial events. During the 20th century it must have been a fascinating discovery for scholars to witness, in rudimentary inns, during those long winter nights, these men surrounded by rough shepherds on their transhumance, reciting thousand-year-old words by the fireside.
Thank you both of you for this cure of intellectual elevation you gave us.
May the Muses, once again, walk on the land of Man!
Yes, Ong mentions these regions specifically. Serbia as well. It is amazing that such a thing can still survive even to today.