You will recognize, of course, that this was largely the method of Jesus and other Biblical figures who, living in an essentially oral culture, drew upon all of the resources of speech, including mnemonic devices, formulaic expressions and parables, as a means of discovering and revealing truth. That accomplished, all parties are agreed that justice has been done, that the truth has been served. With no written law to guide him, the task of the chief is to search through his vast repertoire of proverbs and sayings to find one that suits the situation and is equally satisfying to both complainants. When a dispute arises, the complainants come before the chief of the tribe and state their grievances. The first is drawn from a tribe in western Africa that has no writing system but whose rich oral tradition has given form to its ideas of civil law. ![]() Thus, we can assume that many of the 280 jurors who cast a guilty ballot against Socrates did so because his manner was not consistent with truthful matter, as they understood the connection. ![]() To disdain rhetorical rules, to speak one’s thoughts in a random manner, without proper emphasis or appropriate passion, was considered demeaning to the audience’s intelligence and suggestive of falsehood. Although Plato himself disputed this conception of truth (as we might guess from Socrates’ plea), his contemporaries believed that rhetoric was the proper means through which “right opinion” was to be both discovered and articulated. Though it always implied oral performance, its power to reveal the truth resided in the written word’s power to display arguments in orderly progression. To the Greeks, rhetoric was a form of spoken writing. Media is communication, not just the substrate to communication. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of artificial medium. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances. Postman extends the concept of the weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, although he disavows the association with Marshall McLuhan, going even further to note that, according to Ernst Cassirer: “Amusing Ourselves to Death” gives the strongest argument I’ve seen as to why the written word is qualitatively different from other types of media, and why literacy is so foundationally important to being a well-informed person.įor another explanation of TV’s impact on politics, see also: The Charisma Hypothesis Summary and Notes 1. Written in 1985, this book is even more true in the Internet era. TV truly does “dumb you down” and Postman gives a biting argument as to why.
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