“I've lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I've never bitten, I've been waiting, keeping myself for later - and now I've just ascertained that I don't have teeth anymore.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Age of Reason”
Excellent piece Christopher, and it's an honor to have you join us for the Parallax Course this July! It also means a lot that you'd be so supportive and interested in Belonging Again. Thank you!
I think increased literacy can cause loneliness for a lot of the characteristics that it holds identified by Ong (orality and literacy) One of the big ones i can think of now being the fact that that literate exposition needs to assume that the audience does not share in the same immediate surroundings. For example, I can't say to you right now, "oh wow what a great post, it reminds me of her." Who is her? am I pointing? I think when we get habituated in literate language use, where we get good at assuming a distance, we can also fortify distance. Further inside of literate language use its much easier to talk about and hold in mutual shared attention objects in the H's house of being (ie. justice) rather than objects in being (ie. the particular tree I sit beside) and so our topography of salience shifts to those things.
This is getting long.. but I wanted to say that though I'm a fellow lonely reader, reaching out to the same circle for the same form of connection, I also have a really nice nest of life-long non-reading friends I can talk to. When I can step down from my book encrusted tree-fort and just talk in a orally-oriented mode, they are more than happy, and more than capable of discussing all the big questions closest to my heart, but just with different source metaphors and references and analogies.
Excellent piece Christopher, and it's an honor to have you join us for the Parallax Course this July! It also means a lot that you'd be so supportive and interested in Belonging Again. Thank you!
I think increased literacy can cause loneliness for a lot of the characteristics that it holds identified by Ong (orality and literacy) One of the big ones i can think of now being the fact that that literate exposition needs to assume that the audience does not share in the same immediate surroundings. For example, I can't say to you right now, "oh wow what a great post, it reminds me of her." Who is her? am I pointing? I think when we get habituated in literate language use, where we get good at assuming a distance, we can also fortify distance. Further inside of literate language use its much easier to talk about and hold in mutual shared attention objects in the H's house of being (ie. justice) rather than objects in being (ie. the particular tree I sit beside) and so our topography of salience shifts to those things.
This is getting long.. but I wanted to say that though I'm a fellow lonely reader, reaching out to the same circle for the same form of connection, I also have a really nice nest of life-long non-reading friends I can talk to. When I can step down from my book encrusted tree-fort and just talk in a orally-oriented mode, they are more than happy, and more than capable of discussing all the big questions closest to my heart, but just with different source metaphors and references and analogies.