Primal Religions 2022

 The guest speaker brought a lot to my attention about human connectedness with nature. I loved the idea of having a clan of an animal that is your spirit animal, as well as the idea that paintings of animals on rocks can come to life. I also love how the words for blood and fresh water are the same, as well as rock and bone. I hope that someday our society can return to a more natural and connected state with the earth as well.

 After watching the documentary about Chauvet Cave, I couldn't help but think what religion before the advent of systemized language would be like? We have focused so much this semester on the connection between oral traditions and primal religions, but what about before we know whether or not there was a strong oral culture. According to the documentary the cave paintings seem to have a narrative structure. This would suggest the presence of oral narratives in their culture. There is nothing that would tell us if the paintings were the subjects of oral narratives or if they were a communication method of all their own. If so, we are not even sure if the full extent of the meaning behind the paintings. It remains unclear if they served a ritualistic purpose or if they were a record-keeping method. If they were a mode of religious communication, perhaps like the dreamtime paintings of the Aboriginals, how were the beliefs or the rituals passed outside of communication. It would foll...

 Abram relates how the Hebrews are purportedly the first culture to understand time as linear because they connected non-repeating natural disasters with an idea of linear time. They also connected this with the will of YHWH. Abram quoted:  “[F]or the first time, we find affirmed, and increasingly accepted, the idea that historical events have a value in themselves, insofar as they are determined by the will of God.” Excerpt From: David Abram. “The Spell of the Sensuous.” Apple Books.  How does a non-linear understanding of time affect the conception of the will of God? Abrams connects the conception of non-linear time with writing because the Hebrews were able to write and record the history of their people because they were an early alphabetic culture. This allowed them to understand that the natural disasters are non-repeating. Would the Abrahamic God, then be considered more mythical and if it wasn't found that time is linear. Or would the style of writing be used les...

 Walter Ong names the new forms of communication that radio and television created after writing. He bases this off of the connection between television and radio with sound. So what would he think about silent movies? After reading Ong and Abram, I believe silent movies are indicative of another communicative direction that humankind could have explored further, a secondary pictographic communication. The lighting, visual cues, scenery, and music all combined to form dramatic explorations into the human ego, and fears of the unknown. This ended abruptly with the invention of movies with sound, but what would have happened if this had evolved further. Perhaps we would have transitioned into a new form of communication like texting with a series of gifs  or a heavier reliance on images in books than seen now. I think this also would have affected the way we communicate with others. Perhaps our actions during speech would have become more flamboyant, mimicking the silent movie a...

 2/14 I read a walk in the woods. This book was about a man named bill hiking the Appalachian trail with his friend. The book reminded me of the oral cultures we learn about in class. I was connecting the idea of an oral culture and hiking the Appalachian trail while reading this book. While people are on the trail they use speech as their primary method of communication, since they won't always have service in the woods or their phone could lose battery. I wonder if people's senses are heightened such as hearing after hiking long distance hikes for many months.  I did not really like this book to much. I thought it was interesting that it gave a lot of random information about the trail and history, but the story line was not great. Also the ending is very disappointing- I won't spoil it. 

 Music can act as a constraint to fix a verbatim oral narrative. Ong, Walter J.. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New Accents) (Kindle Location 1262). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.  Sitting and listening to Jewish Prayer being sung in Hebrew calls to mind a soulful and yearning song. Though the words themselves have no meaning for me, the way they are sung conveys a message that is beyond words. This made me think about the connection between sound in primary orality and how that is translated to written cultures. Specifically, other language that are not Semitic in origin have a similar musical quality. French, Italian, and Spanish seem to roll off of the tongue. There is nothing I can think of that would account for the musical quality these languages all share, so I can't help but to think that the connection might be the role that oral culture plays in forming these languages. Perhaps it is the close relation between these languages and orality...

 It appears that the structure of the Greek language, the fact that it was not based on a system like the Semitic that was hospitable to omission of vowels from writing, turned out to be a perhaps accidental but crucial intellectual advantage. Kerckhove (1981) has suggested that, more than other writing systems, the completely phonetic It appears that the structure of the Greek language, the fact that it was not based on a system like the Semitic that was hospitable to omission of vowels from writing, turned out to be a perhaps accidental but crucial intellectual advantage.  Ong, Walter J.. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New Accents) (Kindle Locations 1744-1746). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.  Here Ong states that the Hebrew alphabet is no phonetic because it allows for the omission of vowels. He also argues that more advanced systems of phonetic writing, meaning that they are less pictographic, are more removed from the things themselves. T...