Blog #1

Jessica Moore

Class reading: Nonliterate Traditions and Holy Books: Toward a New Model, Sam D. Gill.

In the first part of this article, Gill talks about how some oral tribes believe they are "better" or "superior" to civilized people. A tribe who has no written language, written books, and has such a crude language that they could not be understood to one another unless they also use there hands, compares themselves to a civilized culture and thinks they are better. Needless to say, I don't agree with this. However, to stay away from the "I'm better than you" mindset, I think it is more accurate to say that the two types of living styles (oral and civilized) are so different from one another, that a clean comparison can not be made.
Another point I don't agree with is a quote from a member of the carrier tribe in British Columbia which said, "The white man writes everything down in a book so that it might not be forgotten; but our ancestors married the animals, learned their ways, and passed on their knowledge from one generation to another." Now, I can not survive without my planner. I am constantly writing anything and everything down in there so I don't forget things. If I don't write it down, it won't get done. The same goes for class notes, if I don't put it in my notes, then I won't study it. If oral cultures "marry" the animals and have the time to study their every move and remember everything about them and pass every little thing down to their ancestors, then I applaud them; they are way better than I am. But is this method really reliable? It seems to easy to forget something without writing it down. But that could just be me, always relying on the technology of writing.