Probably the most shocking discovery we sometimes make is that,
in order to be able to undertake new experiences, we need to
forget, to break the curse of literate memory, and to immerse
ourselves in the structurally amnesiac systems of signs
corresponding to and addressing our senses. Nathaniel Hawthorne's
short story "Earth's Holocaust" was prophetic in this sense. In
this parable, the people of a new world (obviously the United
States of America) bring all the books they inherited from the
old world to a great bonfire. Theirs is not an exercise in
mindless book-burning. They conscientiously discard all the
rules and ideas passed down through millennia that governed the
world and the life they left behind. Old ideas, as well as new
ones, would have to prove their validity in the new context
before they would be accepted. Indeed, the awareness brought
about by theories of the physical world, of the mind, of our own
biogenetic condition made possible practical experiences of
self-constitution that are not like anything experienced by
humans before our time. The realization of relativity, of the
speed of light, of micro- and macro-structures, of dynamic
forces and non-linearity is already translated in new structures
of interactions. Our systems of interconnection- through electric
energy, telephone (wired and cellular), radio, television,
communication, computer networks-function at speeds comparable to
that of light. They integrate dynamic mechanisms inspired by
genetics, physics, molecular biology, and our knowledge of the
micro- and macro-structure.
Our life cycle seems to accept two different synchronizing
mechanisms: one corresponding to our natural condition (days,
nights, seasons), the other corresponding to the perceived scale
and to our striving towards efficiency. The two are less and less
dependent, and efficiency seems to dominate nature. Discovery of
the world in its expanded comprehensive geographic dimensions
required ships and planes. It also required the biological
effort to adapt and the intellectual effort to understand various
kinds of differences. In outer space, this adaptation proves to
be even more difficult. In a world in a continuous flux of newer
and newer distinctions, people constitute, instead of one
permanent and encompassing literacy, several literacies, none of
which bears the status of (quasi)eternal. Differentiation of
human experience is so far reaching that it is impossible to
reduce the variety to one literate language.
In the process of building rational, interpretive methods and
establishing a body of knowledge that can be tested and
practically applied, people often discard what did not fit in
the theories they advanced, what did not obey the laws that these
theories expressed. This was a necessary methodology that
resulted in the progress we enjoy today. But it was also a
deceptive method because what could not be explained was
omitted. Where literacy was instilled, non-linguistic
aspects-such as the irreducible world of magic, mystery, the
esoteric (to name a few)-were done away with. Commenting upon
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Illich and Sanders pointed
out that there is a whole world in Twain's novel that is
inaccessible to the illiterate, but also a world of folklore and
superstition that cannot be understood by those hostage to the
beautiful kingdom of literacy. Folklore in many countries, and
superstition, and mystery in all the varieties corresponding to
human practical self-constitution are definitely areas from
which we might gain better insight into life past, present, and
future. They are part of the context and should not be left out,
even though they may belong to the epoch before literacy.
All in all, since language was and still is the most
comprehensive testimony to (and participant in) our experience
as human beings, we may want to see whether its crisis says
something about our own permanence and our own prejudices
concerning the species. After all, why, and based on what
arguments, do we see ourselves as the only permanence in the
universe and the highest possible achievement of evolution?
Literacy freed us in many respects. But it also made us prisoners
of a number of prejudices, not the least a projection of
self-awareness in direct contradiction to our own experience of
never-ending change in the world.