Things Fall Apart

"Does the white man understand our custom about land?"
"How can he when he does not even speak our tongue?"

That quote stood out from me in the context of the class because it talks about what a cultural barrier there is between people of different cultures that even speak different languages.  I think that the difference between cultures is much more than just a language barrier, but in Things Fall Apart the language barrier is especially important because the Umuofians have an oral culture whereas the whites are literate, shown in the end as the commissioner plans to include Okonkwo's story in his book on how the Nigerian tribes were "pacified."  This particular scene also shows the difference in cultures-the white people did what seems like a completely ridiculous thing now by taking over these tribes and trying to erase their culture, but in their culture they had been taught that their way was best and all others must be pacified.  In the end, it's really not that different from how the Umuofia tribespeople thought, Okonkwo was willing to do anything to save his tribe and when it became clear that he could not do anything about it, he killed himself thus separating him from them forever.

I think that it is taught in everyone's culture that their culture is the best and that they should try to convert everyone else to it.  I think if you ask any American, most of them would be reluctant to ever move to a foreign country and give up everything they know and have been raised on.  The same can be said for most other cultures, oftentimes even when people were flooding to the United States it wasn't because they didn't love their culture, but because life got too difficult in their homeland for them to stay.  Once large groups of Italians and Irish and Chinese and other groups of people came to the United States, they lived in communities together and continued to practice the customs taught to them in their home country.  They then passed on these traditions to their children.  Culture is something nobody is ready to give up.  While I believe Things Fall Apart was meant to show the wrongdoings of the white people that came into Nigeria, I think it also speaks of how strongly people are attached to their culture.

Blog: second half of Ong

The point about criticisms of writing when writing first started being the same as some people's criticism of computers today was really interesting to me.  A lot of what was said hit home with me.  It is always interesting to look back in history and see what people thought at that time compared to today.  Today I feel that people would argue that the ability to read and write strengthens the mind rather than hurts it.  I feel like the same is true about computers.  People worried that if calculators were used, students wouldn't learn math the same way anymore.  That could be a downside, but think of how much further math has come since the invention of the calculator and how people can do things in seconds that would take hours by hand.

That said, there are benefits to oral and literate cultures.  It's true that a piece of writing or literature places a boundary between the person reading and the information.  In an oral culture, if someone is telling you a story about the history of your culture and you have a question, you can just ask them.  In writing, you have to look it up elsewhere or find someone educated enough to answer your question.  This reminds me of text messaging or emailing someone instead of calling them.  Texting may be faster or easier than calling someone, but oftentimes people get confused and things can be taken the wrong way.  I've seen many situations where someone is offended by a text message because there's no context.  If you had been able to tell them the same thing they could have heard your tone or maybe you could've explained yourself better and avoided confusion and hurting the other person's feelings.  However, texting is fast, easy and much less disruptive and distracting than making a call.  Oftentimes adults are upset by people texting in their presence, but I can often focus on a text message and what the other person is saying at the same time.  In verbal communication, all attention must be placed on the speaker and the listener.

Another example of short text changing communication is Twitter.  Twitter combines text and computers to spread messages fast.  I found out about Patrick Swayze's death as well as a tornado warning in South Central LA where my sister goes to school all within minutes of the announcement.  However, Twitter has limitations such as message length and some other downsides.

Overall, communication is changing all the time.  it's funny that a long time ago Plato thought writing might be the be all end all of the human mind when I think many would argue today that it actually helps and allows people to learn more.  Any new technology has its downsides and most people are reluctant to change, but oftentimes the upsides are worth the process of changing.

Ong Ch. 1-3

Chapters 1-3 of Ong brought up three very interesting concepts to me.  First, that writing makes words seem like things because they become a picture on the page.  I’ve discussed this in my classes before and I think it’s really interesting.  Words have no meaning until we as a society assign them one.  If we were to look at foreign languages like Hindi or Russian that use characters completely different from the English alphabet the characters would probably look like pictures to us.  Also, the writing is completely meaningless unless you speak the language.  Written language requires definition and interpretation.  Oral language does as well, but in an oral culture you would most likely be communicating with people speaking your own language.

The second interesting point was that thought requires continuity so in an oral culture you need redundancy.  In text, you can easily refer to something earlier in the text if you forget something or if you want to understand something better.  However, if communication is only spoken you have to repeat things to remember them.  Think of how many times you’ve asked someone to help you remember something.  I do that all the time if I’m worried about remembering something because the chances of two people remembering something are far greater than you alone.  This also relates to oral history where stories get repeated from generation to generation in order to preserve the history of a culture.

The third interesting point relates back to the first one.  Ong mentions that worlds are abstract and the word tree doesn’t represent a concrete thing.  Once again this shows how words need to be defined to be meaningful.  Language isn’t necessarily concrete and especially since words are more or less smaller visual representations of things, confusion can easily occur.  Without any explanation, there aren’t very many pieces of art that I would understand the concept of fully without having some explanation for the artist.  Words aren’t as open ended as art is, but they are still not concrete.  Every time you say tree you’re not talking about one thing, but many different things.