Post by epictetus on Nov 24, 2018 7:39:32 GMT 10
I LOVE writing and reading ❤, and I don't see it as inferior to speaking and listening, except at close quarters, where communication has to be unmediated, and where quick action is required. Hence I was taught at OTS Point Cook that one had to be good at oral communication, and this meant clear, concise, and authoritative briefing, instruction and commands. (Later, we all completed a more substantial Staff College course on written communication.)
But Peter Jones has a point. One can hide behind the written word. It can be a coward's castle for those who are too timid to come face to face with one who opposes you and who might rattle the house you've built on the consensus of your echo chamber.
Well, Peter Jones and Socrates touch a nerve. I'm fairly timid, reluctant to interrupt, and so keen to hear what the other person has to say that I don't contribute much myself. But as a writer, I can be fearless campaigner, free from interruptions, and where I don't explain myself clearly, I can always edit.
Is that a bad thing? Does it make writing inferior to speaking and listening? I don't think so. The two modes serve different functions in different contexts, and in any communication context really matters.
Putting it all together, the functional linguists would say 'Field' (subject), 'Tenor' (who's involved, at what distance), and 'Mode' (the channel, or medium, of the communication) determine what is communicated, by whom, to whom, with what intention and by what means.
These in turn are all determined by in the total context in which the communication takes place. Socrates like to shoot the breeze with young men in the agora. The context determined the mode: oral-aural. Plato wanted Athenians, beyond those he could actually talk to, to know what Socrates taught. His medium for this was writing.
It was common in ancient times for students who actually heard their teachers, e.g. Aristotle, Buddha, Epictetus, to record what they said for others to read. Makes sense, doesn't it? But the opportunity for really engaging the speaker is lost in just reading his words.
In my university days, almost every lunchtime one could listen to a short public lecture on political and philosophical topics, often controversial and delivered by people of differing and opposing viewpoints. No one would have even considered 'de-platforming'. I first heard of de-platforming at Melbourne University in the late 70s, I think, when some students tried to prevent the psychologist Hans Eysenck from speaking. So it's not altogether new, but had not then become common. Times change, and we must adapt, but that doesn't mean they've changed for the better. And how, ultimately, without psychic pre-cognition, would we know?
....................................................................................
Socrates vs Steve Bannon
Peter Jones
The Spectator, 24 November 2018
The country’s champions of free speech — the police — were recently out in force to ensure that the alt-right Trump-supporting Steve Bannon could address the student union in Oxford. The students, inevitably, wanted him silenced. But what were they so afraid of? Plato knew: it was a matter of the difference between the spoken and the written word.
In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates told a story that the Egyptian wise man Theuth was responsible for many inventions, but presenting them all to the king Thamus, he claimed that writing was the finest of the lot, ‘the magic key to memory and wisdom’. Thamus disagreed: writing would destroy memory, and therefore internalisation of learning. ‘Under you, students will read many things without being taught them, and so will appear to know a great deal. But for the most part they will remain in ignorance and difficult to teach, because they will have gained the appearance of wisdom, instead of the real thing.’
Socrates went on to say that writing reminded him of a picture: its products appeared alive, but ask them a question and answer came there none. So with words on the page: it looked as if they contained real ideas, but if you asked them a question in order to learn something, silence. ‘Once written down, words say exactly the same to those who know about the subject as to those to whom they are irrelevant… and if reviled or abused, they are incapable of defending or helping themselves.’
Only the to and fro of ‘living, animate speech’ between teacher and taught could plant the seeds of true knowledge that would flourish in the mind of the student. Hence Plato wrote dialogues — the closest he could get to the spoken word. And it is dialogue that is the students’ problem.
Fearless enough to read about the ‘fascist’ Bannon, because they can then revile or abuse him among their fellow-travellers without fear of reprisal, they are clearly petrified at the prospect of engaging with him live and in person and taking him on. After all, they might be persuaded! Or, even worse, made to look idiots! That would never do. So much safer to demonstrate their commitment to rational enquiry by shouting abuse.
www.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/socrates-vs-steve-bannon/
But Peter Jones has a point. One can hide behind the written word. It can be a coward's castle for those who are too timid to come face to face with one who opposes you and who might rattle the house you've built on the consensus of your echo chamber.
Well, Peter Jones and Socrates touch a nerve. I'm fairly timid, reluctant to interrupt, and so keen to hear what the other person has to say that I don't contribute much myself. But as a writer, I can be fearless campaigner, free from interruptions, and where I don't explain myself clearly, I can always edit.
Is that a bad thing? Does it make writing inferior to speaking and listening? I don't think so. The two modes serve different functions in different contexts, and in any communication context really matters.
Putting it all together, the functional linguists would say 'Field' (subject), 'Tenor' (who's involved, at what distance), and 'Mode' (the channel, or medium, of the communication) determine what is communicated, by whom, to whom, with what intention and by what means.
These in turn are all determined by in the total context in which the communication takes place. Socrates like to shoot the breeze with young men in the agora. The context determined the mode: oral-aural. Plato wanted Athenians, beyond those he could actually talk to, to know what Socrates taught. His medium for this was writing.
It was common in ancient times for students who actually heard their teachers, e.g. Aristotle, Buddha, Epictetus, to record what they said for others to read. Makes sense, doesn't it? But the opportunity for really engaging the speaker is lost in just reading his words.
In my university days, almost every lunchtime one could listen to a short public lecture on political and philosophical topics, often controversial and delivered by people of differing and opposing viewpoints. No one would have even considered 'de-platforming'. I first heard of de-platforming at Melbourne University in the late 70s, I think, when some students tried to prevent the psychologist Hans Eysenck from speaking. So it's not altogether new, but had not then become common. Times change, and we must adapt, but that doesn't mean they've changed for the better. And how, ultimately, without psychic pre-cognition, would we know?
....................................................................................
Socrates vs Steve Bannon
Peter Jones
The Spectator, 24 November 2018
The country’s champions of free speech — the police — were recently out in force to ensure that the alt-right Trump-supporting Steve Bannon could address the student union in Oxford. The students, inevitably, wanted him silenced. But what were they so afraid of? Plato knew: it was a matter of the difference between the spoken and the written word.
In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates told a story that the Egyptian wise man Theuth was responsible for many inventions, but presenting them all to the king Thamus, he claimed that writing was the finest of the lot, ‘the magic key to memory and wisdom’. Thamus disagreed: writing would destroy memory, and therefore internalisation of learning. ‘Under you, students will read many things without being taught them, and so will appear to know a great deal. But for the most part they will remain in ignorance and difficult to teach, because they will have gained the appearance of wisdom, instead of the real thing.’
Socrates went on to say that writing reminded him of a picture: its products appeared alive, but ask them a question and answer came there none. So with words on the page: it looked as if they contained real ideas, but if you asked them a question in order to learn something, silence. ‘Once written down, words say exactly the same to those who know about the subject as to those to whom they are irrelevant… and if reviled or abused, they are incapable of defending or helping themselves.’
Only the to and fro of ‘living, animate speech’ between teacher and taught could plant the seeds of true knowledge that would flourish in the mind of the student. Hence Plato wrote dialogues — the closest he could get to the spoken word. And it is dialogue that is the students’ problem.
Fearless enough to read about the ‘fascist’ Bannon, because they can then revile or abuse him among their fellow-travellers without fear of reprisal, they are clearly petrified at the prospect of engaging with him live and in person and taking him on. After all, they might be persuaded! Or, even worse, made to look idiots! That would never do. So much safer to demonstrate their commitment to rational enquiry by shouting abuse.
www.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/socrates-vs-steve-bannon/
