|
The
Alphabet Versus The Goddess
The Conflict Between Word & Image
By Leonard Shlain Epilogue
Beauty will save the world.
-- Dostoevsky
In laying out the considerable circumstantial
evidence implicating the written word as the agent responsible
for the decline of the Goddess, I have sought to convince the
reader that when cultures adopt writing, particularly in its
alphabetic form, something negative occurs. because of
literacy's overwhelming benefits, this pernicious side effect
has gone essentially unnoticed. My methods differed from most
historical analyses in that I gave little weight to the content
of the works of any period, and focused instead on the
perceptual changes wrought by the processes used to learn an
alphabet. Throughout, as a writer, as an avid reader, and as a
scientist, I had the uneasy feeling that I was turning on one of
my best friends.
All of my adult life I have lived in two
worlds--one dictated by the exigencies of being a surgeon and
the other inspired by the imaginary realm of literature. I am
amazed at and humbled by the sheer volume of words in the
medical textbooks I have read in order to learn my profession. I
know that each written statement represents the accumulated
wisdom of earlier physicians who had to endure the inevitable
blind alleys associated with the imperfect process of trial and
error.
Without a means to organize, clarify,
classify, and pass on this gleaned knowledge--not only in
medicine, but in all fields--how far advanced would our culture
be? But the neatly alphabetized indices appearing in our
textbooks and encyclopedia represent only part of the great gift
of literacy. There exists another dimension also: the sheer
aesthetic pleasure that accompanies reading.
Breaking the confines of the shell that more
or less encases each individual, literature allows readers'
minds to emerge into the imaginations of the most thoughtful
writers who have ever lived. I, personally feel deeply grateful,
privileged, and ennobled to count Yeats, Plato, Shakespeare, and
Dostoevsky among my mentors. I am who I am because of alphabet
literacy. To bring this charge against the written word, I had
to use the written word to assist me in solving this complex
whodunit--an irony not lost on me.
I acknowledge the analytic, linear,
sequential skills of my own left brain without which I could
never have kept track of the narrative arrow that aligns this
work. My left hemisphere's gift of abstraction has permitted me
to discern this connection among seemingly disparate historical
events. My scientific side has persisted in badgering me like a
pesky gadfly protesting, "yes but" throughout, and
that skepticism resulted in a better book.
Perhaps in my zeal to make my points I have
overstated that right/left, feminine/masculine, nurturer/killer,
and intuiter/analyzer dualities. In individuals, the divisions,
the divisions are not so sharp, and there are templates upon
human history has helped clarify many complex currents and has
made certain patterns apparent that otherwise would have
remained murky.
I am aware that I have expended considerable
ink bashing the left brain, whose wondrous achievements are
celebrated on library shelves filled with the works of geniuses
of logic, science, philosophy, and mathematics; I did not think
it necessary to extol their contributions further here. The left
brain's essential expression--masculine energy--has crafted many
of humankind's great moments, but it has also informed the worst
ones. For every Newton, there has been a Jack the Ripper. A
subtheme of this book is that a lopsided reliance on the left
side's attributes without the tempering mode of the right
hemisphere initially leads a society through a period of
demonstrable madness. it is only after this initial phase passes
that literacy begins to work its salutary wonders for a culture.
I have tended to characterize the
right-hemispheric attributes as purely positive. But it is no
less true that relying on them without the ordering balance
which is the forte of the left hemisphere leads to a different
kind of disarray and can result in mindless anarchy and sensuous
excess. Emphasis on one hemispheric mode at the expense of the
other is noxious. the human community should strive for a state
of complementarity and harmony.
Another reason compelling me to write this
book: I have been troubled since my youth by a question that
surfaced as I became entranced by Greek mythology. I do not
remember at what point it occurred, but I became aware that the
Greeks did not engage in religious wars. Instead, they treated
one another's belief system with admirable tolerance and
civility. What then, I asked myself, had changed in human
culture? Presently, to be a Jew, Muslim, Catholic, or Protestant
seems to inspire suspicion and in many cases hatred of the other
three. Growing up during World War II and the Holocaust made
finding an answer to my question seem urgent. Nearly everyone in
the Western world believes in one God. How could the adherents
of the presumably lofty monotheistic belief despise each other
so since they all freely acknowledge that they worship the same
deity.
If there had been a time in the historical
past when people did not kill each other over religion, then why
did they start? What factor, i asked myself, could have exerted
such a powerful influence upon culture? That I suspect it was
the alphabet resonates with the quote from Sophocles I cited on
page 1: "Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a
curse."
I began my query intent on answering the
question Who killed the Great Goddess? My conclusion--that the
thug who mugged the Goddess was alphabet literacy--may seem
repugnant to some and counterintuitive to others. I cannot prove
that I am right. I have had to rely on the doctrine of
competitive plausibility, arranging the tesserae chips of
historical events into a mosaic of many periods and cultures.
Any individual chip's texture and design can be (an has been)
explained by local conditions, but when all of them are viewed
juxtaposed together, I think a pattern can be discerned showing
the shaping influence on culture of writing and particularly the
alphabet. the rise and fall of images, women's rights, and the
sacred feminine have moved contrapuntally with the rise and fall
of alphabet literacy.
I am convinced we are entering a new Golden
Age--one in which the right-hemispheric values of tolerance,
caring, and respect for nature will begin to ameliorate the
conditions that have prevailed for the too-long period during
which left-hemispheric values were dominant. images, of any
kind, are the balm bringing about this worldwide healing.
It will take more time for change to permeate
and alter world cultures but there can be no doubt that the
wondrous permutations of photography and electromagnetism are
transforming the world both psychically and psychically. the
shift to right-hemispheric values through the perception of
images can be expected to increase the sum total awareness of
beauty.
Long before there was Hammurabi stela or the
Rosetta stone, there were the images of Lascaux and Altamara. In
the beginning was the image. Then came five millennia dominated
by the written word. The iconic symbol is now returning. Women,
the half of the human equation who have for so long been denied,
will increasingly have opportunities to achieve their potential.
This will not happen everywhere at once, but the trend is toward
equilibrium. My hope is that this book will initiate a
conversation about the issues I have raised and inspire others
to examine the thesis further.
Source:
The
Alphabet Versus The Goddess: The
Conflict Between Word and Image (1998) by Leonard Shlain* * *
* *
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* * *
* *
|
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and
the Education of a President
By
Ron Suskind
A new
book offering an insider's account of the
White House's response to the financial
crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim
Geithner ignored an order from President
Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of
major banks. According to Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, the
incident is just one of several in which
Obama struggled with a divided group of
advisers, some of whom he didn't initially
consider for their high-profile roles.
Suskind interviewed more than 200 people,
including Obama, Geithner and other top
officials . . . The book states Geithner and
the Treasury Department ignored a March 2009
order to consider dissolving banking giant
Citigroup while continuing stress tests on
banks, which were burdened with toxic
mortgage assets. . . .Suskind states that
Obama accepts the blame for mismanagement in
his administration while noting that
restructuring the financial system was
complicated and could have resulted in
deeper financial harm. . . . In a February
2011 interview with Suskind, Obama
acknowledges another ongoing criticism—that
he is too focused on policy and not on
telling a larger story, one the public could
relate to. Obama is quoted as saying he was
elected in part because "he had connected
our current predicaments with the broader
arc of American history," but that such a
"narrative thread" had been lost.—Gopusa
|
 |
* * * * *
Source:
The
Alphabet Versus The Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (1998) by Leonard Shlain
 |
Leonard Shlain -- Surgeon, Author,
Educator, Inventor, Speaker -- has received many distinctions
and awards both as a surgeon and educator. He began his
writing career in the late 1970's contributing articles to
magazines and newspapers including the Los Angeles Times.
In addition to being an author, Shlain is
also Chief of Laparoscopic Surgery at California Pacific Medical
Center in San Francisco and Associate Professor of Surgery at
UCSF. He was a pioneer in the field of video-assisted
laparoscopic surgery and presently holds five patents for
surgical devices. His Art & Physics is presently used
as a textbook in many universities, high schools, and art
academies. |
In a more recent book,
Sex, Time, and
Power, Shlain offers carefully reasoned, and certain
to be controversial discussions on such subjects as
menstruation, orgasm, puberty, circumcision, male aggression,
menopause, baldness, left-handedness, the evolution of language,
homosexuality, and the origin of marriage. Written in a lively
and accessible style,
Sex, Time, and
Power is certain to
generate heated debate in the media and among readers interested
in human evolution and the history of sexuality.
* *
* * *
update 31 July 2010
|
