Controlling the World - Susan Watkins

(Reflection on Assigned Reading)

"With their attention directed on texts, scholars often went on to assume, often without reflection, that oral verbalization was essentially the same as the written verbalization they normally dealt with, and that oral art forms were to all intents and purposes simply texts, except for the fact that they were not written down. The impression grew that, apart from oration (governed by written rhetorical rules), oral art forms were essentially unskillful and not worth serious study."

- Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy, p. 10

This is so ironic to me. Our modern society would love to believe that we are completely objective race with the ability to detach ourself from time and look objectively at the world, and yet we still fall into such classic blunders as assuming that just because a trend is current it is better than those which came before. As soon as it was pointed out in this context I began to see it in others.

Here, Ong points out that researchers tend to assume that written communication is better than oral. Consumers who buy and drive modern cars would emphatically agree that modern cars are far superior to those which came before. Modern computing technology is clearly "so much better" than in years past. Our perspective on gender roles in society are more balanced and equal and therefore better. Our moral philosophies are more current and therefore more advanced than those that came before. And, really, I'd probably agree with all this if were were assuming "better" is merely a synonym for "more efficient." However, I don't. And, if as humans we are really so sophisticated and objective as we'd like to believe, we shouldn't either.

Humans love and desire to control. This is a theme I've been fascinated with this semester, and essentially the topic of my final paper. I think that in reality, this egoism about literacy and technology and present-day knowledge is really just an expression of the human race's desperate attempt to establish some sort of control over the world. It's an understandable phenomenon but one which is completely misguided. We think that to be in complete control of a situation is to effectively rule out danger there, and so it seems natural for us work in that direction. Efficiency is a sign of control, because it means we manipulate events in order to accomplish some desired outcome, and do it well. Thus, any increase in efficiency furthers our sense of control and gratifies that particular desire.

I also happen to think this is complete lunacy and goes against every basic thing we know about the world and about ourselves. The very nature of the universe, having existed so many billions of years before we did, means its creation was utterly outside of our control and implies that its existence still is. We hope to control death, but the only reason we hope to control it is because we know for a fact there is a realm beyond life which is 100% independent of us and our control. So really, all this attempt to pretend we are the rulers of our universe is ludicrous.

In my opinion, of course.

That being said, I think that there is evidence in our daily lives which in smaller ways can point us to the necessity of abandoning control in order to really experience life. Those existential moments when we are most free, most happy, are usually those when we are most completely out of our control. Feeling deep love, joy in the midst of a game, wonder and awe, is impossible when we try to manage and control our responses to the world. We have to abandon control to feel them. On the flip side, it's also true that the emotions of deep grief, rage, and anger come most quickly when we give up control. We try to ward them off by rigorously maintaining our mental defenses, and in some ways succeed; whether this is healthy or not is for the reader to decide. What's more, though, I would ask if gaining absolute control over negative emotions is worth sacrificing the heights of life found in those positive emotions.