By: Carly Le Blanc
10/29/07
In Orality and Literacy, Ong explains his ideas of “Close to the Human Lifeworld.” I found it to be kind of confusing at first. What is close to the human life world? And what isn’t? Anything that relates to me right now would have to be close to the human lifeworld but I suppose it is the degree of relation that makes the difference. In our culture it seems like most people like to pretend that everything is their business, people looking to argue. For something to be close to the human lifeworld, maybe it must be something I need-like a diet. I need to eat in order to survive, that is close my human lifeworld. So I guess if something is not close to the human lifeworld, I suppose it is something that has no effect on me. But in a primal world where everything is interconnected, how can I expect anything to not have an effect? Well that something that I believe has no effect would have been anthropomorphized or somehow brought down into my world. Primal people assimilate distant ideas into their everyday life. I can see even in my thought process how linear and disconnected I am. I was looking in terms of cause-and-effect, and as being alone. I was not thinking in terms of my community or through a tangled web of story and experience. Ong emphasizes lists and catalogues as being a huge distancer from the human lifeworld. I thought about encyclopedias while reading this section. To use an encyclopedia you have to be able to find the index book, be knowledgeable about the volume and page number system, and understand the layout of the library to be able to actually locate your book. Once you have the encyclopedia you learn about animals, processes, places that you’ve never even seen before. But to do so you must understand the Dewey decimal system, index organization, and the ability to count and read. These are all abstract concepts that one must utilize in order to abstractly experience whatever they are reading—further distancing us from the human lifeworld.
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