Writing Is a Good Thing
May 30, 2007
Buddhism: it took hundreds of years after Siddhartha Gautama died before his orally-transmitted teachings were written down. Homer's epics: hundreds of years, maybe thousands. The Old Testament: definitely thousands of years of survival by word of mouth only, and then finally written down. Once written, the words are available for all to learn and experience, right? No; one must also know how to read, which the vast majority of humanity did not know how to do until fairly recently. And even then, one could only read what was written in a language known by the reader, and the written copies of texts were not plentiful.
How much observation, insight, knowledge, and wisdom was lost over the course of the 1st 10,000 years or more of "civilization" because the observer or holder of the insight/wisdom couldn't write down their thoughts and were not able to successfully pass them on orally? That, to me, is the single most influential differentiator between the "advanced" cultures of the Old World as compared to the New World. Although individual brilliance can and does pop up anywhere, anytime, in any culture, a people can only accomplish so much without a writing system that enables them to refer to and build on existing knowledge. The minuscule number of "geniuses" throughout the ages is almost certainly several orders of magnitude larger than we know, but we have no record of their brilliance which died with them. The explosion of invention, creativity, knowledge, and all else which springs from the mind of humanity that has taken place over the last few hundred years is, I believe, due to nothing more than the widespread ability to read, write, translate, and mass produce copies of writings into languages and onto media that can be consumed by the whole human race, allowing all Mankind to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Interesting. The lack of reading ability has also been used to keep some people in a disadvantaged and backward social state. For instance, the Hindu socio-religious texts of Vedas were passed through recitation and repetition. Only high-caste Brahmins could recite the Vedas and listen to them being recited. Should any low-caste, untouchable have heard the recitation, molten lead was poured in his ears for having committed the sin. I imagine that written forms made them more accessible.
That said the Pali language, in which Buddha's teachings are written is known to go back up to 300BC, as it is found on some architectural monuments of that period in India. The teachings of Buddha were perhaps captured contemporaneously although whether he spoke Pali is debatable as Sanskrit was wide-spread then as well.
And it is believed in some circles that 'standing on the shoulders of giants' was less a philosophical statement that Newton's derogation of the short stature of Robert Hooke!
Posted by: Shefaly | May 31, 2007 at 10:42 AM