“I” IS FOR INDIVIDUAL

I have a two-year-old daughter. These days I am spending a lot of time teaching her one of the most powerful technologies the world has ever known. It’s the one you are consuming right now: the technology of letters — the invention of reading and writing. This invention radically transformed the consciousness of an entire civilization.

Consider the experience of a woman living in a pre-literate, or oral, culture. There is no knowledge or means of writing. This person would have no ability to fix her ideas in space or time. Let’s say she has a very important thought, a thought so important that it could change the course of history. Without any ability to fix this thought in time and space, she must rely on her community for retention of ideas and stories. She shares her thought with the community and then they share it with each other. This is called oral tradition. The stories tend to be short, rhythmic blocks of teaching that make them easier to internalize and remember. The gospel accounts in your Bible are products of oral tradition.

One of the chief marks of all oral cultures is that they are very tribal in nature. They depend on the community to retain their most important ideas, traditions, and stories. In fact, a tribe member’s sense of identity is determined by the complex interrelationships of the tribe. The notion of the individual is almost nonexistent because tribe members are together all the time. And they tend to be very empathic. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. A modern Western psychologist would look at this culture and say its members are very enmeshed.

Now the question is: What happens when we introduce the technology of writing into our oral culture? First, the technology of reading and writing demands isolation. It serves to separate us from the tribe. Then, because we have the ability to fix our ideas in time and space, we no longer have the threat of losing those ideas. And so the tribe is no longer necessary for establishing and maintaining one’s cultural identity. As a consequence, literate societies tend to be very individualistic. Identities are determined by boundaries. My personal identity is determined not by the tribe, but by where I end and you begin. The concern is with who I am as an individual apart from the tribe. This leads to an emotional distancing.

Consider this. If you’re in a heated argument with your spouse, the technology of writing provides a cooling effect. It gives us, for the first time in the human history, the ability to act without reacting. If I sit and journal my thoughts and feelings, they reside outside me, independent of me. I’m able to look at them in time and space. I can analyze them and try to understand them. I’m then able to reenter the argument with new clarity and emotional distance. Thus, literate cultures show a preference for detached objectivity over subjective experience.

These are just a few examples of the shaping power of literacy. Two different cultures — two different value systems and cultural habits determined in large part by the media used to communicate. It has nothing to do with what you say, but rather with what you use to say it.

THE TRIBAL DRUM BEATS AGAIN

Literate culture in the West lasted from the invention of the printing press in the 15th century until 1850, about 400 years. But from 1850 to 1890, a slew of uninterrupted inventions completely dissolved and reconstituted the communication structure in the West. And what made them unique was their ability to harness the power of electricity. Every single modern day technology, from the Internet to iPhones to podcasting, can be traced back to a small handful of these original inventions. In my view, the three most important are the telegraph, the photograph, and the radio. For our purposes here, we’ll consider only one of these.

McLuhan called the radio the “Tribal Drum.” It returned humanity to the world of the voice and the ear. It immerses us in the boundless, horizonless experience of acoustic space. And every time it “beats,” we huddle around the fire, listening to shared tribal music and stories. This retribalizing tendency of the radio and newer technologies erodes the individual’s experience of a unique point of view. It returns us to simultaneous, surround-sound experience of acoustic and oral space on a mass scale. Take September 11. Unless you were at Ground Zero, you joined every other American in experiencing the exact same event, from the same set of camera angles, at the same time. That is a mass experience with no unique point of view. This is the retribalizing tendency of electronic culture.

THE PARADOX OF ELECTRONIC CULTURE

While it’s true that we in the West are being retribalized under the force of the digital age, we are not returning to the simplicity of an oral culture. We are still raised today as individuals. From the very earliest time, I am teaching my daughter the individualizing technology of reading and writing. Success in our culture depends on the mastery of that technology. Under these conditions, we experience the simultaneous experience of being thrown together from far-off places and being separated from those nearest to us.

The effect is a paradoxical one. Electronic culture does opposite things at the same time. If oral culture is tribal, and literate culture is individual, then the phenomenon of the electronic age is marked by what I call the tribe of individuals. We live in a confused state of being characterized by a deep and growing desire for connection and community and the ever-increasing experience of an electronic nomad. It’s the isolating and thin existence of electronically wandering the globe, glancing off one another, but never really connecting or encountering the other.

The paradoxes go on. If oral culture is empathic, and literate culture is distant, the electronic age is marked by empathy at a distance. This is a condition that emerges when our TVs and computer screens flood our living rooms with images of planetary suffering: from September 11 to the Tsunami to Darfur to all the other ongoing famine, genocide, wars, and starvation in the world. While this allows us the opportunity to extend compassion to these far-off places, it actually has the opposite affect. There is an immediate outpouring of support followed by a detached, clinical numbness.

The end result is apathy and inaction. This is not our fault; it’s not because we are bad people. The human psyche isn’t designed to withstand all the weight and trauma of global suffering without shutting down. Numbness and exhaustion are natural reactions. This experience of horror and empathy, followed by shutting down and feelings of helplessness, is the condition of empathy at a distance. And it didn’t exist prior to the electronic age. The reason this matters is that the spiritual habit of empathy at a distance also finds its way into our local communities. It becomes increasingly difficult to muster local activism and genuine concern for others when global suffering has already cauterized the nerves of compassion.

Comments

Comments are now closed