Starting The Alphabet Vs. The Goddess

I just started the book that Shaman Sexson allowed me to borrow. It is called The Alphabet vs. The Goddess by Leonard Shlain. The very first thing that struck me while reading the preface was that Shlain is a surgeon by profession. He heads a medical department and is an associate professor of surgery and he writes books like this. First impression: this guy is making me look bad.

I just finished chapter 1 and find it to be extremely relevant to the topics of oral traditions, and closely related to Orality and Literacy and Wisdom of the Mythtellers.

Shlain argues that the invention and rise of the alphabet demoted the feminine goddess figure from her throne and replaced her with the masculine figure. He writes on page 3, "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." He goes about explaining this by first setting up the characteristics of femininity. Shlain claims that they are a holistic, simultaneous, synthetic and concrete view of the world. The masculine qualities are opposite: linear, sequential, reductionist, and abstract.

Ong shares this point speaking about Latin on page 111, "For well over a thousand years, it was sex-linked, a language written and spoken by males." The culture that surrounded the academic Latin scene built it for the male population, however Shlain would add that the idea of Latin's alphabetic characters were the bases for why the culture catered toward the masculine and not the feminine.

Shlain argues that the process of writing and reading force a deconstructionist view in order to understand writing. This falls under the masculine qualities, as does the basic structure of writing which is linear. Since, according to Shlain, feminine views delight in images, the alphabetic word opposes a holistic, imaged based interpretation system.

I was originally going to write about the tacit connections in nature and how the attempt of science to explain those connections degrades the oral tradition. However, I might lean more toward the feminine qualities in nature and how literacy degrades them. As Shaman Sexson told me in class, "degrade" is a very strong word. I agree, however... for me to analyze the phenomenon, it is easier to see the worst, as lesser example are then easier to find.

I am looking forward to diving further into Shlain's book and learn about more interactions with the alphabet and its surroundings.