The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image
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The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780140196016 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 09/01/1999 |
| Series: | Compass |
| Pages: | 496 |
| Sales rank: | 263,056 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.07(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
IMAGE/WORD
But of all other stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant either in time or place? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangement of two dozen little signs upon paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of man.
--Galileo
Even a positive thing casts a shadow.... its unique excellence is at the same time its tragic flaw.
--William Irwin Thompson
Of all the sacred cows allowed to roam unimpeded in our culture, few are as revered as literacy. Its benefits have been so incontestable that in the five millennia since the advent of the written word numerous poets and writers have extolled its virtues. Few paused to consider its costs. Sophocles once warned, "Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse." The invention of writing was vast; this book will investigate the curse.
There exists ample evidence that any society acquiring the written word experiences explosive changes. For the most part, these changes can be characterized as progress. But one pernicious effect of literacy has gone largely unnoticed: writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women's power in the culture. The reasons for this shift will be elaborated in the coming pages. For now, I propose that a holistic, simultaneous, synthetic, and concrete view of the world are the essential characteristics of a feminine outlook; linear, sequential, reductionist, and abstract thinking defines the masculine. Although these represent opposite perceptual modes, every individual is generously endowed with all the features of both. They coexist as two closely overlapping bell-shaped curves with no feature superior to its reciprocal.
These complementary methods of comprehending reality resemble the ancient Taoist circle symbol of integration and symmetry in which the tension between the energy of the feminine yin and the masculine yang is exactly balanced. One side without the other is incomplete; together, they form a unified whole that is stronger than either half. First writing, and then the alphabet, upset this balance. Affected cultures, especially in the West, acquired a strong yang thrust.
In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan proposed that a civilization's principal means of communication molds it more than the content of that communication. McLuhan classified speech, pictographs, ideographs, alphabets, print, radio, film, and television as distinctive information-conveying media, each with its own technology of transmission. He declared that these technologies insinuate themselves into the collective psyche of any society that uses them, and once embedded, stealthily exert a powerful influence on cultural perceptions.
McLuhan's aphorism, "the medium is the message" is the leitmotif of this book. Robert Logan, the author of The Alphabet Effect, expounded on this idea:
A medium of communication is not merely a passive conduit for the transmission of information but rather an active force in creating new social patterns and new perceptual realities. A person who is literate has a different world view than one who receives information exclusively through oral communication. The alphabet, independent of the spoken languages it transcribes or the information it makes available, has its own intrinsic impacts.
While McLuhan, Logan, and others have explored many of the effects that alphabetic literacy has had upon Western history, I wish to narrow the focus to a single question: how did the invention of the alphabet affect the balance of power between men and women?
The proposition that the alphabet has hindered women's aspirations and accomplishments seems, at first glance, to be antithetical to historical facts. Western society, based on the rule of law and constitutional government, has increasingly affirmed the dignity of the individual, and in the last few centuries Western women have won rights and privileges not available in many other cultures. Most people believe that the benefits that have accrued to women are due primarily to a high level of education among the populace. But a study of the origins of writing in less complex times thousands of years ago reveals how writing, first, and then the alphabet, altered the balance of power to women's detriment.
Anthropological studies of non-literate agricultural societies show that, for the majority, relations between men and women have been more egalitarian than in more developed societies. Researchers have never proven beyond dispute that there were ever societies in which women had power and influence greater than or even equal to that of men. Yet, a diverse variety of preliterate agrarian cultures--the Iroquois and the Hopi in North America, the inhabitants of Polynesia, the African !Kung, and numerous others around the world--had and continue to have considerable harmony between the sexes.
Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was one of the very few scholars to challenge literacy's worth.
There is one fact that can be established: the only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing ... is the establishment of hierarchical societies, consisting of masters and slaves, and where one part of the population is made to work for the other part.
Literacy has promoted the subjugation of women by men throughout all but the very recent history of the West. Misogyny and patriarchy rise and fall with the fortunes of the alphabetic written word.
The key to my thesis lies in the unique way the human nervous system developed, which in turn allowed alphabets to profoundly affect gender relations. The introductory chapters will explore why and how we evolved in the manner we did. In later chapters, I will reinterpret a number of myths and historical events, making correlations based on circumstantial evidence. Correlation, however, does not prove causality--the disappearance of the stars at dawn does not cause the sun to rise. As we examine various sets of facts, I will appeal, therefore, to the court of what archaeologists call competitive plausibility, and I will ask the reader to consider with me which of the hypothetical explanations of historical events is the most plausible.
Although each of us is born with a unique set of genetic instructions, we enter the world as a work-in-progress and await the deft hand of the ambient culture to sculpt the finishing touches. Among the two most important influences on a child are the emotional constellation of his or her immediate family and the configuration of his or her culture. Trailing a close third is the principal medium with which the child learns to perceive and integrate his or her culture's information. This medium will play a role in determining which neuronal pathways of the child's developing brain will be reinforced.
To observe an enthralled four-year-old mastering the letters of the alphabet is to witness the beginning of a lifelong method central to the acquisition of knowledge. Literacy, once firmly rooted, will eclipse and supplant speech as the principal source of culture-changing information. Adults, for so long enmeshed in the alphabet's visual skein, cannot easily disentangle themselves to assess its effect on culture. One could safely assume that fish have not yet discovered water.
Imagine that you came of age in a non-literate culture and were unaware of the impact the written word could have on your life. Suppose that as an adult you then found yourself in a literate society confronted by others who seemed to possess magical powers. Your reaction probably would not differ much from that of Prince Modupe, a young West African who, in his autobiography, related his encounter with the written word:
The one crowded space in Father Perry's house was his bookshelves. I gradually came to understand that the marks on the pages were trapped words. Anyone could learn to decipher the symbols and turn the trapped words loose again into speech. The ink of the print trapped the thoughts; they could no more get away than a doomboo could get out of a pit. When the full realization of what this meant flooded over me, I experienced the same thrill and amazement as when I had my first glimpse of the bright lights of Konakry. I shivered with the intensity of my desire to learn to do this wondrous thing myself.
The prince could not know that in his attempt to free the doomboo, the pit itself would trap him in an unforeseen way: written words and images are entirely different "creatures." Each calls forth a complementary but opposing perceptual strategy.
Images are primarily mental reproductions of the sensual world of vision. Nature and human artifacts both provide the raw material from the outside that the brain replicates in the inner sanctum of consciousness. Because of their close connection to the world of appearances, images approximate reality: they are concrete. The brain simultaneously perceives all parts of the whole integrating the parts synthetically into a gestalt. The majority of images are perceived in an all-at-once manner.
Reading words is a different process. When the eye scans distinctive individual letters arranged in a certain linear sequence, a word with meaning emerges. The meaning of a sentence, such as the one you are now reading, progresses word by word. Comprehension depends on the sentence's syntax, the particular horizontal sequence in which its grammatical elements appear. The use of analysis to break each sentence down into its component words, or each word down into its component letters, is a prime example of reductionism. This process occurs at a speed so rapid that it is below awareness. An alphabet by definition consists of fewer than thirty meaningless symbols that do not represent the images of anything in particular; a feature that makes them abstract. Although some groupings of words can be grasped in an all-at-once manner, in the main, the comprehension of written words emerges in a one-at-a-time fashion.
To perceive things such as trees and buildings through images delivered to the eye, the brain uses wholeness, simultaneity, and synthesis. To ferret out the meaning of alphabetic writing, the brain relies instead on sequence, analysis, and abstraction. Custom and language associate the former characteristics with the feminine, the latter, with the masculine. As we examine the myths of different cultures, we will see that these linkages are consistent.
Associating images with the feminine would seem to fly in the face of numerous scientific studies that demonstrate that males are better at mentally manipulating three-dimensional objects than their female counterparts. Also, numerous other studies reveal that young females are more facile with words, spoken and written, than are their male peers. Despite these studies attributing different image and word skills to each sex, I will present many cultural, mythological, and historical examples that will solidly connect the feminine principle to images and the masculine one to written words. Again, I will use the terms "masculine" and "feminine" in their transcendent sense. Every human is a blend of these two principles.
The life of the mind can be divided into three realms: inner, outer, and supernatural. The inner world of experienced emotions and private thoughts is essentially invisible to others. The outer, concrete world of nature constitutes our environment: it is objective reality. There exists also a third realm: some call it spiritual, some call it sacred, and some call it supernatural. Humans have acknowledged and incorporated this third realm into every culture ever created.
The cosmology of any given culture is analogous to the psyche of an individual. Its myths and religion reveal how the group psyche arrives at its values concerning sex, power, wealth, and gender roles. In hunter-gatherer societies, members generally worship a mixture of male and female spirits. In general, virile spirits tend to be more prestigious in societies that place a high value on hunting; nurturing ones are more highly esteemed wherever gathering is the primary strategy of survival.
Humankind discovered horticulture approximately ten thousand years ago. In the Mediterranean, the most extensively studied region, archaeologists have uncovered strong suggestive evidence that in all emerging agrarian civilizations surrounding the basin, a mother Goddess was a principal deity. From the outer rim of history, we begin to learn Her name. In Sumer, She was Inanna; in Egypt, She was Isis; in Canaan, Her name was Asherah. In Syria, She was known as Astarte; in Greece, Demeter; and in Cyprus, Aphrodite. Whatever Her supplicants called Her, they all recognized Her as the Creatrix of life, nurturer of young, protector of children, and the source of milk, herds, vegetables, and grain. Since She presided over the great mystery of birth, people of this period presumed She must also hold sway over that great bedeviler of human thought--death.
Prior to the development of agriculture, male spirits embodied the attributes of bold, courageous hunters. But in the iconography of the Great Goddess, male imagery paled. Her consort was a companion who was smaller, younger, and weaker than She. A conflation of a son She loved in a motherly way, and a lover She discarded after he consummated his duties of impregnation, he was so dispensable in these ancient myths that he frequently died, either by murder or by accident. In many agrarian cultures, the yearly sacrifice of a young male surrogate in the consort's honor was a common ritual. The participants then plowed the victim's seed blood into the earth as "fertilizer" to ensure that the following year's crop would be bountiful. The clearest demonstration of the Goddess's power was Her ability to bring him back to life each spring. Whether She was resurrecting Her consort or regenerating the earth, Her adherents stood in awe of Her fecundity. For several thousand years, every people throughout the Fertile Crescent venerated a deity who personified the Great Goddess. When we speak of this area as the "cradle" of civilization, we tacitly acknowledge the superior role the feminine principle played in the "birth" of modern humankind.
Then, the Great Goddess began to lose power. The barely legible record of the earliest written accounts beginning about five thousand years ago provides intimations of Her fall. Her consort, once weak and inconsequential, rapidly gained size, stature, and power, until eventually he usurped Her sovereignty. The systematic political and economic subjugation of women followed; coincidentally, slavery became commonplace. Around 1500 B.C., there were hundreds of goddess-based sects enveloping the Mediterranean basin. By the fifth century A.D. they had been almost completely eradicated, by which time women were also prohibited from conducting a single major Western sacrament.
In their attempts to solve the mystery of the Goddess's dethronement, various authors have implicated foreign invaders, the invention of private property, the formation of archaic states, the creation of surplus wealth, and the educational disadvantaging of women. While any or all of these influences may have contributed, I propose another: the decline of the Goddess began when some clever Sumerian first pressed a sharp stick into wet clay and invented writing. The relentless spread of the alphabet two thousand years later spelled Her demise. The introduction of the written word, and then the alphabet, into the social intercourse of humans initiated a fundamental change in the way newly literate cultures understood their reality. It was this dramatic change in mind-set, I propose, that was primarily responsible for fostering patriarchy.
The Old Testament was the first alphabetic written work to influence future ages. Attesting to its gravitas, multitudes still read it three thousand years later. The words on its pages anchor three powerful religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each is an exemplar of patriarchy. Each monotheistic religion features an imageless Father deity whose authority shines through His revealed Word, sanctified in its written form. Conceiving of a deity who has no concrete image prepares the way for the kind of abstract thinking that inevitably leads to law codes, dualistic philosophy, and objective science, the signature triad of Western culture. I propose that the profound impact these ancient scriptures had upon the development of the West depended as much on their being written in an alphabet as on the moral lessons they contained.
Goddess worship, feminine values, and women's power depend on the ubiquity of the image. God worship, masculine values, and men's domination of women are bound to the written word. Word and image, like masculine and feminine, are complementary opposites. Whenever a culture elevates the written word at the expense of the image, patriarchy dominates. When the importance of the image supersedes the written word, feminine values and egalitarianism flourish. In this book we will explore what this has meant throughout the human past, and in later chapters will consider what it says about the present and portends for the future.
Table of Contents
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess PrefaceAcknowledgments
1. Image/Word
2. Hunters/Gatherers
3. Right Brain/Left Brain
4. Males: Death/Females: Life
5. Nonverbal/Verbal
6. Cuneiform/Marduk
7. Hieroglyphs/Isis
8. Aleph/Bet
9. Hebrews/Israelites
10. Abraham/Moses
11. Thera/Matzah
12. Adam/Eve
13. Cadmus/Alpha
14. Sappho/Ganymede
15. Dionysus/Apollo
16. Athens/Sparta
17. Lingam/Yoni
18. Birth/Death
19. Yin/Yang
20. Taoism/Confucianism
21. B.C./A.D.
22. Jesus/Christ
23. Death/Rebirth
24. Patriarchs/Heretics
25. Reason/Madness
26. Illiteracy/Celibacy, 500-1000
27. Muslin Veils/Muslim Words
28. Mystic/Scholastic, 1000-1300
29. Humanist/Egoist, 1300-1500
30. Protestant/Catholic
31. Faith/Hate
32. Sorcery/Science
33. Positive/Negative, 1648-1899
34. Id/Superego, 1900-1945
35. Page/Screen, 1945-2000
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess is as brilliant as it is well-wrought, an intricate weaving of past and present told in a story that is never less than absorbing. A wonderful book.
Leonard Shlain may himself be the quintessential fusion of word and image. With superb writing, he draws for us a fascinating account of the evolution of our male and female ways of knowing, of the curses -- not just the blessings -- of reverence for the word alone. As a history and science lesson, this book is a vivid, breathing page-turner. As a threshold to a new perception of our history and our future, it offers both chilling reminders and great hope. Yes, great hope.
A bold and masterful work. I couldn't put the book down.
A tour de force, with stunning new insights about gender relations, language, and consciousness.
Reading Group Guide
INTRODUCTION
This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind.
ABOUT LEONARD SHLAIN
Leonard Shlain is the author of the acclaimed Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light, soon to be a twenty-three-part MSNBC TV series. He has written for many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, and lectures widely on the connection between art and science, and on the subject of this book. A true Renaissance man, he is also the chief of laproscopic surgery at the UC San Francisco Medical Center. He lives in Mill Valley, California.
A CONVERSATION WITH LEONARD SHLAIN
You base your thesis on the idea that literacy—or the use of the alphabet—is primarily a left-brain activity, one that also represses right-brain activity. Can you elaborate on how the repression of right-brain activities would lead to misogynist societies?
When we speak and listen we use both sides of the brain. The left hemisphere processes the words linearly. Simultaneously, the right hemisphere evaluates speech's nonverbal clues such as body language and vocal inflection. Literacy, in contrast, depends primarily on the skills of the left hemisphere of men and women. I believe the right hemisphere (of both men and women who are right-handed) processes tasks traditionally female. The left hemisphere (of both men and women who are right-handed) processes tasks traditionally male. Literacy reinforces the masculine left hemisphere and devalues the right lobe, and this factor inflamed misogyny in literate societies. This occurred in the brains of both men and women, each of whom possesses a masculine side and a feminine side. Of course, it isn't as neat as I have explained here, but these are the bones of my thesis.
What, exactly, compelled you to research the effects of left-brain values on civilization? What came first: the thesis or the research?
I was electrified by the split brain research of the '60s. As a surgeon, I have operated on carotid arteries to the brain. I also was deeply affected by the ideas of media theorist Marshall McLuhan. In 1991, I went on an archaeological tour of Mediterranean sites and was intrigued by the overwhelming evidence of a time when both men and women worshipped goddesses. By the time Judaism, Christianity, and Islam became the West's only three religions, goddesses had disappeared. It occurred to me that this event coincided with the time when people were learning to read and write. I suspected that there was something in the way people learned this new skill that reconfigured their brains. I hypothesized that the demise of the goddess was an inside job.
How do your findings about right- and left-brain values apply to your own dual careers as surgeon and writer?
Surgery is very yang and a little yin, writing is very yin and a little yang. Being both a writer and a surgeon provides a considerable balance to my life. Also, surgeons are steeped in science and are trained in a very left-brained manner early on. But the actual practice of surgery is very right-brained. It is tactile, intuitive, and very visual- spatial. Further, surgeons are the essence of hunter-killers seeking and rooting out disease literally with their hands. Very masculine. And yet, caring for patients during one of the most frightening and painful episodes of their lives requires tenderness and empathy. Surgery is caring and hunting.
Your description of the evolution of the early male and female body and brain is fascinating. If you were to make a conjecture, how would you guess that our bodies and brains are developing now?
Our success as the only truly predatory primate was primarily due to two incompatible features. One was our need to remain bipedal so we could walk on the ground and keep our hands free. The other was a constant need to increase cleverness by enlarging the brain. Babies' heads became so big that they became stuck in the mother's birth canal. Hominid females began to die in childbirth. Something had to give. Nature redesigned the human nervous system. Lacking hardly any instincts, humans are born helpless, but they possess a brain capable of acquiring incredible amounts of knowledge. A split brain simplified the wiring for a language brain. Language allows us to learn easily. We have continued to evolve by adding outside peripherals to our brain. The first was culture enhanced by spoken language. Then came writing, libraries, the printing press, photography, film, television, and now computers and the Internet. Each new technology of information transfer makes humans smarter and more knowledgeable and it is these extra-somatic pieces of our brain that are changing us even though our bodies remain the same.
Was there more of a dichotomy between men and women and left- and right-brain behavior at the dawn of civilization?
We can only make speculative assumptions concerning the structure of human societies long ago. Evidence seems to suggest that gender roles were more firmly established in hunter-gatherer societies than they are presently. We are social predators similar to lions, wolves, and killer whales that hunt in cooperative packs. In other social predators, the females play a leading role in the hunting and killing. In humans, hunting is left primarily to the males because crying babies cannot be brought along. Human offspring require more care from their mothers than the offspring of any other life form. What other female would come to the aid of its offspring if it called for help twenty-five years after the date of birth? Despite the considerable differences in the principal labors of each sex, there was a tacit recognition of the importance of one to the other. An economic and emotional interdependence fostered a greater level of equality than would exist in many more advanced empires that came later. There is evidence that we have been split-brained and split-handed since ancient times. Prehistoric artists painted outlines of their left hands in eighty percent of examples studied, suggesting that the same percentage were right-handed. Presently, the ratio is ninety-two percent right-handed people to eight percent left-handed. Some factor changed in culture to skew these ratios. I believe it was literacy.
Are we evolving into more integrated societies as a whole? How do literacy and other forms of communication influence this development?
Yes. I believe that McLuhan's aphorism "the medium is the message" provides the insight into the effect on culture of its principal form of communication. It isn't only the content of information that can change us, it is the process by which we perceive the information. Speaking and listening are very different activities from writing and reading. The former engages both sides of the brain but the latter relies more on one: the masculine side of both men and women. This factor bolsters patriarchy and misogyny and unbalances culture.
You state that "there is something inherently anti-female in the written word. Men obsessed with the written word tend to be sexist." Can you elaborate on this point? What does it mean to be "obsessed" with the written word? What happens to women obsessed with writing?
There is a neurological condition known as hypergraphia. Hypergraphia afflicts men disproportionately. Compulsive diarists possess a lesion in their left brain that causes them to write excessively, detailing every aspect of their life. They often endow their tedious writings with great religious significance. In general, hypergraphics are rigid, humorless, domineering, and unsympathetic. One could easily imagine how women, feminine values, and intuition would fare if one of these patients was in a position of power. This profile, however, fits many Western religious leaders. Augustine, Jerome, Luther, and Calvin spent great portions of their lives writing long religious tracts. These men were "obsessed" with the importance of their written words. Using fear and threats to carry out their aims, they were all misogynists whose writings turned people away from the goddess, nature, and the feminine.
Poets and novelists use metaphors, a right hemispheric form of language. They "paint" images with words and differ from writers of abstract works. As an exercise, try to come up with the name of a significant male writer who wrote long dense tomes about religion and philosophy and who also was not a misogynist.
Women are generally not as affected by the masculinizing tendencies of the written words because the brains of women are not nearly as sharply divided as the brains of men. Women in general do not as often as men express extremes. Women who write feminist polemical books tend to express themselves more in their masculine modes.
You discuss at length the horrors visited upon the aboriginal peoples living in the New World by its conquerors—sixteenth-century Europeans "driven mad by the printing press"—and you wonder how such an invasion would have been different if the conquering culture had been more tolerant, such as the early Romans under Julius Caesar. How exactly does pre-literacy impact on a culture's tolerance? Weren't ancient and modern invaders of non-Western lands equally bloodthirsty and destructive?
Belligerency appears to be a fairly universal human trait. Nevertheless, the least war like societies seem to be pre-literate agricultural societies. Iroquois Indians, for example, maintained the Great Peace in the Northeast for over three hundred years. Hunter/gatherer, pastoral, and nomadic cultures tend to be more "bloodthirsty." There is no evidence that Neolithic agricultural people ever fought organized wars. The most contentious periods in Western history were those characterized by high literacy rates: Classical Greece, Imperial Rome, the Renaissance, and Europe of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The roots of mayhem are complex but I feel that alphabet literacy has been an overlooked factor.
How does the Internet fit in with your hypothesis? Like the printing press, it duplicates type, and must be read. And yet it also sends out an image, making use of right-brain skills. Is the Internet an example of the kind of unifying trend you see as part of current civilization's makeup? Or will it present its own problems for historians and anthropologists of future centuries to analyze and discuss?
The computer and the Internet will once again reconfigure the brains of those that use them. Typing is a two-handed activity that requires input from both sides of the brain. Writing requires only the dominant hand. The use of a mouse by the right hand necessitates the activation of right-hemispheric visual-spatial skills. The World Wide Web and the Internet are not linear, they are holistic. All ancient deities associated with webs and nets were goddesses. Many of the processes we use to operate a computer are inherently feminine.
What criticisms have your theories elicited? How would you address them?
The main criticism stems from people hearing about the theory but not reading the book and misinterpreting what I have proposed. I am not saying that men read better than women or that men's left brains are better than women's. I am not saying that people shouldn't read or that television is an unqualified benefit. Some feminists resent that a man has written a book about the goddess. Mea culpa. Some academics are appalled that a non-specialist has wandered through their turf. Mea culpa. And some reviewers believe that interpreting all history through a narrow lens is too simplistic. To write a book of such sweeping scope, I had to leave out a lot of alternative possibilities. This does not mean that I am unaware of them. In general, the book has been very favorably reviewed and many people are excited to have a neuroanatomical hypothesis to explain a historical enigma.
You set forth an optimistic view of the present and the future, of a world in which the "right-hemisphere values of tolerance, caring, and respect for nature" will help correct some of the damage that has been wrought over the past two millennia. What sorts of changes do you envision in terms of human behavior, technology, and communication? What, if any, dangers exist in a world dominated by right-hemisphere values?
Human advances move in fits and starts. Technology has moved us all to a global village. Tolerance has markedly increased. Religious wars are on the wane. Fundamentalism is in retreat. Dogmatic ideologies have been discredited. At the same time, human rights are moving forward. Women's status is on the upswing. And a newfound respect and love for nature is evident in the burgeoning ecology movement. There remains much work to be done but I believe that as image and word come into balance, so too will left and right hemispheres, and masculine and feminine. All extremes have dangers and too much emphasis on right-hemispheric modes could lead to superstitions, sensual excesses, and a loss of scientific advances. Despite these concerns, I think we are living in a New Renaissance fueled by the Iconic Revolution.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Throughout the book Shlain emphasizes the dualities inherent in the experience of living—life/death, yin/yang, reason/madness. Why do you think it is important to recognize these dualities? Can you think of examples in your own life in which opposing forces work together to create both negative and positive change?
- Shlain uses the example of Christ's teachings to illustrate the difference between the spoken word and the written word. Communication, he argues, changes when it is written. What sorts of changes is he talking about? How do you think the ideas exchanged in your own group would be altered if they were written down?
- In his history of human civilization, Shlain recounts centuries of cruel and violent behavior carried out in behalf of religion and ethnic purity. In each case, he cites a literacy-related cause for such behavior. Using his thesis, is it possible to find similar root causes for such atrocities as the tribal massacres in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, or shootings in America's schools? A century from now, how do you think historians and anthropologists will explain these incidents?
- Shlain is optimistic for the future of mankind and is convinced that we are returning to right-hemisphere-type values that point to a more peaceful future. Do you agree or disagree with him?
- Shlain cites a number of male figures—including Moses, Christ, Plato, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Hitler, Einstein, and Freud—who made important and lasting (but not always beneficial) contributions to civilization. What makes their contributions so significant? How were they or their actions affected by the written word? Can you add any living people—any women—who might be added to that list?
- Chances are, you have a television and a telephone in your home. Discuss the role these technologies play in your lives, especially with regard to communication. Likewise, how do you think computers are affecting current generations of young people? Are the impacts mostly positive or negative?
- Discuss the right-brain/left-brain theory and explain which sides each of you favor. Then discuss how the results break down by gender in your group.
- Shlain points to the invention of the printing press as the cause for much of the excessive behavior of the sixteenth century. Is the Internet our century's printing press? Give examples in which the Internet has played an important role, whether negative or positive, in shaping recent events.
- "In the age of the image," writes Shlain, "literacy will inevitably decline." Even if this development does not lead to a decline in our overall intelligence, what concerns does it raise? Imagine if your children's school decided that learning to perceive and create images took precedence over reading skills. Is there a prejudice against imagery in our society? If so, is it a valid prejudice?
- After reading The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, do you agree with Shlain's thesis?
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