I quit reading after 5

Truth....I had read everything but the Ong and I just read five chapters tonight so here is the last summary of what I read...chapter 5.

Print not only effected the West  by how Mrs. Eisenstien discusssed when she talked about the printing press and the Protestant Reformation,but it also had three very subtle effects.  With print, Western culture moved even further away from a hearing dominated sensory world to one dependant on sight.  Words became things.  With the interiorization of this view writing/printing was no longer done as a way to recycle knowledge back into the spoken word.  Things were no longer only printed to be read out loud.  In addition, print embedded the word in space more absolutely then did writing.  Ong said this on page 123.  Through print, words become things that can be arranged on a page as they are in indexes, tables of contents, lists and lables (an extreme example being the arrangement of words in poetry like E.E Cummings).  Finally Ong suggested that pring encouraged closure, a feeling of finality that was never present in oral story telling.  The story is not continued!  It does not change!  At the end of the chapter Ong briefly discussed the emergence, through electronic media such as telephone, radio and television his idea of secondary orality.  Secondary orality encourages being "part of."  Secondary orality is "essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print," and groups produced by socond orality are much larger then any produced by primary oralty!

Chapter four now

at the start, Ong shifted from primary orality to the development of script and its effect on our conciousnes.  One of the most important effects he discusses is the way that writing distances the originator of a thought from the listener (the receiver).  Writing does this by enabling the existence of discourse "which cannot be directly questioned or contested as oral speech can be because written discourse is detached from the writer" (p.78).  In addition, the further entrenched writing became a modes of expression, the more humans moved from an oral/aural based sensory world to one where vision reigns supreme.  This shift premoted the interiorization of thought, promted us to see ourselves as situated in time, and allowed for precise detail and development of a Brandon like vocabulary...haha.  Ong ended this chapter by talking about two major developments in the West which coincidentally illustrates the constant interaction of writing and orality, the development of the complex art of rhetoric and the study of latin!

Chapter 3

It is  in this chapter we get a list of the characteristics of the way people of "primary oral"  culture think and express themselves through narrative and discuss them in the light of memory.  The things we memorized, his 9 characteristics:

1. Expression is additive rather than subordinative

2. it is aggregative rather than analytic

3. redundant and copious

4. Even conservative

5. it is close to the human life world

6. It is antagonistically toned

7. Empathetic and participatory

8. Its Homeostatic

9. situational rather than abstract

All of these contribute to the salency and enhance the memorability of an utterance. Ong explained that this would be especially important to those who were silly enough to memorize a poem because, people from a literate society can always refer back to a written text, those from an oral society must  be able to process bits of the spoken language.  Utterances which fit the above description would tend to leave a strong impression on the hearer and facilitate recollection.

Dumbed down Chapter 2

Ong talked about his brief account of studies done by Milman Parry and Eric Havelock on the "noetic" characteristics of oral cultures.  After summarizing Parry's investigation of tradition of the oral epic and his writtings on Homeric poetry, Ong said that we cannot but be convinced that Parry was correct in concluding that "The Homeric poems valued and somehow made capital of what readers like me had been trained to disvalue, namely, the set phrase, the formula, the epected qualifier- ok I will say it the cliche.  According to Ong the Greeks of Homer's age relied on such formulaic uses of language to aid in the retention of knowledge.  Without writing, if thoughts were not experessed in easily remembered forms and wern't constantly repeated would be lost.  Ong then explains that Eric Havelock, in Preface to Plato, extended Parry's conclusions to include the entirety of ancient Greek culture.  In Ong's words, Havelock shows how "Plato's exclusion of the poets from his Republic was Plato's rejection of the "pristine aggregative, paratactic, oral-style thinking perpetuated in Homer in favor of the keen analysis or dissection of the world and of thought itself made possible by the interiorization of the alphabet in the Greek psyche"

Ong Chapter 1 put into terms even I can understand

Chapter 1 description 

Ong outlines research done by himself and other scholars which aims to describe between oral and literate cultures.  He defines the oral culture (primary Oral culture)  as totally unfamiliar with Writing.  He reminds us that primary oral cultures are actually in the majority and that from a historical standpoint writing is pretty damn new!  Among the 3,000 or so languages which currently exists only 78 have literature.  Our membership in a society as completely committed to writing and print as ours has, made it necessary for him and others to describe primary orality in relation to literacy.  The necessity, he went on to say, led to the use of stupid terms such as "oral literature" one which "reveals our inability to represent to our own minds a heritage of verbally organied materials except as some variant of writing," even when the have nothing to do with writing what so ever!  Its the Scholars say the darndest things!  

my dads 50 greatest musicians/bands

1. Led Zepplin

2. Robert Johnson

3. The Beattles

4. Buddy Holly

5. Janis Joplin

6. Jimmy Hendrix

7. George Thoorogood

8. Jonny Cash

9. Beethoven

10. Motzart

11. Eric Clapton

12. Traffic

13. Willie Nelson

14. The Stones

15. Neil Diamond

16. Bob Dylan

17. Alice In Chains

18. Blind Melon

19. Black Sabbath

20. Nirvana

21. Leo Kotke

22. Joe Satriani

23. Rochmoninov

24. Dispatch

25. Bob Marley and the Whalers

26. The Ramones

27. The Pixies

28. Greatful Dead

29.Pearl Jam

30.Lynard Skynard

31. Robert Johnson

32. Ben Harper

33. Citizen cope

34. The  supremes

35. The platters

36. Big Bopper

37. Charlie Daniels

38. Richie Valence

39. Newsboys

40. Paul York

41. Soundgarden

42. A.C D.C

43. Simon and Garfunke

44. The who

45. The guess who

46. Alabama

47. The clash

48. pachabel

49. santana

50. Paul Revere and the Raiders

Test Goodies and what to know

1). Kane

a. Moonbone- illustrated repitition

b. Property

c. Agriculture

d. Practical

e. white berries

f. carribu and frogs

g. Definition of Myth- song the earth sings to itself

2). Ong

a. primary Orality -oral culture is exactly that ORAL

*no contact with literacty

b. secondary orality- live in a world covered by literacy

*technology, electronic images, texting

c. Chirographic- means a writing culture

d. Typographic- means a print culture

e. read Ong's page 72 about vision vs. sound

*Oh ya, pay attention damn it!

f. Plato's denounce of writing (p.79)

*know his arguement

3). Yates

a. Story of Simonedes

*wedding

*Twins (Castor and Pollux) destroy wedding and kill guests except of Simonedes

*Simonedes could indentify the bodies based on their loci (location) at the wedding     reception.

b. Rhetoric to Ethics to Cosmos

*Middle ages, Memory, Heaven and Hell

*Cosmos (p. 38-39)

-memory not incedental

c. St. Augustine (p. 47).

*remember converted to christianity when he found a book among other things

4) our questions

a.  Grammer Geometry Rhetoric Arithmotic Music Astronomy Dilectic (liberal arts)

b. neoplatonism- mysticism

c. Feb. 20 Jon Nay's Bday

d.Anamnesis- recollection

*why we grow our wings, we have the itch

e. 1600 "Brunner?" burned at stake for talking about the cosmos of memory

*we can become GODLIKE

f. Parataxis

*stringing words together with conjunctions...childhood talk

g. psychodynamics of orality

h. Bicameralsim

I. Esotaric- secret, intimate, private, not for unwashed masses

J. Imagination is 1 hour photo of memory

*memory developed instantly through imagination

k. Shahar Azad (1001 nights)

*physical embodiment of story telling

*survived because of her ability to tell  her stories to her master at night

l. Artificial vs. Natural memory

*Artificial memory- what we do to improve our memory

*Natural memory- what we are born with

m. Collective vs. Personal Unconcious

n. What does writing establish outside of the mind "plato" "Phaderus

o. March 17th 

*St. Patties day

*Green Blood

* Professor Sexon giving his leprechaun blood

p. trinity of memory

*imagination, memory, soul

q. epathets

*brave soldier

*sturdy oak

*beautiful princess

*King Kenning Ben

*Beautiful eyes Kate Bedouin

5). Other important things

a. muses and Ong stuff in memory theater

* Thermometer- Erato and (Oral tradition is additive rather than subornitive

* Blackboard- Clio and (Aggregitive rather than analytical)

* Screen - Urania and (Redundant rather than copious)

*Quiet desk- John Mcain and Thalia and (Conservitive and traditional)

*Projector- Polyhymnia and (Close to human life world)

*Brown Desk- Terpschycre and (Agganistically toned)

* Bulletin Board - Calliope and (impothetic and anticipitory)

* Snowman- Euturpe and (Homeostatic)

* the funky F and Mel Gibson and Pomogranit- Mnemosiney and (situational rather    than abstract)

b. Marshell Mcklueen

*Technology is an extension of ones body

c. Epistiolary culture

*culture of letters

d. Beginning scene of All the Presidents Men

*Typewriter imagery

e. Luddism

*anti-technology

f. Plato's attack on writing

* only authentic relationship is speaking

*when you write it you don't have to remember it

* Writing changes conciousness

g. Yates

*we remember horrible things

-Kennedy assasination (Professor Sexon announced it)

h. The cooler story, cooler by window, what was in it, nothing

i. symulochrom-  representation

*Ben's cabin

j. Shannon's earliest memory

*Stranded in backyard and saved by dad

*actually memory of video

k. Sutter and his renegade blogger

* Sam bloged on Plato

l. We make poetry of our world...

*jump rope rhymes

m. Testify is remembered by the testi

n. Flyting

*verbal assults

* Free style rap is an example

O. The tempest will be on there

P. Shakespear's sonnet 13 is his memory sonnet THIS WILL BE ON THERE

Q. Stanely fish talked about Ecantatory (things subordinate)

R. Blooms day is June 16th 1902

S. Oral world is concrete not abstract according to Ong

T. We have amnesia in oral tradition

* memories with no meaning will fade

U.  When interviewing a new principle chose him on how well he dances

*difference between literacy and orality

R. Remember me's

*Hamlet (act 1 scene 5)

* Jesus and last supper

*Krishna

Is Literacy just the evolution of orality?

I remember my mother reading me Children's Stories like Hanzel and Gretel and singing me bedtime songs such asTwinkle Twinkle little star when I was young. Does the fact that my mother learned these through literacy deminish the effect and hinder the orality of it? I guess I will have to agree with the Symposiam on this one. I believe that literacy became essential for orality to survive. I know for a fact that one of the greatest tools that helped me learn language and become able to reproduce stories orally was literacy. I learned how to talk by listening to my parents reading to me and eveuntally, I practiced my orality on them by reading back.
In time, things will change. I can't help but think of how Allegory evolved into the novel. Did it kill Allegory, no, it was a new way of using Allegory and I believe that it is the same for orality and literacy. How else are we allowed to be part of another culture. Can I imagine my life without reading Beaowolf or Shakespeare? No! Now that I have read them, I can orally recite my own uniqe version to someone else. See how it works?! Orality has evolved an arm called literacy, it is not a cancer like Socrotece suggested.

Groundhogs day and a sense of time.

To speak of the Native American sense of time as a "chronology" may be deceiving, for the clock that dictates the flow and sequence of the Native American story is not strictly linear, as in the Western sense, but rather is cyclical. The reason they have a more cylclical view (from my own understanding) is because the most important things also move in cylcles. The seasons, the rotations around the sun ect....all cyclical. This made me think of groundhogs day. If the same day is repeated in a cycle isn't it fair to say (if we use the cyclical time idea) that day is important. IT makes me feel ok now when I use the same routine every day. I won't cry when I wake up to "When The Levy Breaks." I agree with Jon Nae that being concious and aware is not a bad thing. Being concious and aware helped me realize the importance of this day (since I woke up the same as yesterday).
That brings me to awareness. This is a tough goal to reach, to be aware that is. Walter Ong said "Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer. Vision dissects, as Merleau-Ponty has observed (1961). Vision comes to a human being from one direction at a time: to look at a room or a landscape, I must move my eyes around from one part to another. When I hear, however, I gather sound simultaneously from every directions at once; I am at the center of my auditory world, which envelopes me, establishing me at a kind of core of sensation and existence... You can immerse yourself in hearing, in sound. There is no way to immerse yourself similarly in sight. By contrast with vision, the dissecting sense, sound is thus a unifying sense. A typical visual ideal is clarity and distinctness, a taking apart. The auditory ideal, by contrast, is harmony, a putting together. Interiority and harmony are characteristics of human consciousness. The consciousness of each human person is totally interiorized, known to the person from the inside and inaccessible to any other person directly from the inside. Everyone who says 'I' means something different by it from what every other person means. What is 'I' to me is only 'you' to you... In a primary oral culture, where the word has its existence only in sound... the phenomenology of sound enters deeply into human beings' feel for existence, as processed by the spoken word. For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous in psychic life."

put downs!

Here is what my sister said to me....still hurts to this day!

stare stare hard hard
double double retard
lame mame booger brain
take a picture it will last longer.....stay tuned for my next blog where I discuss how I see orality leading to the formation of the novel!!! Coming sson to a blog near you!