Ron D Y Media: Academic Papers on Media & History

 

The Self and the other – a media approach of the encounter between Native Americans and Anglo-American settlers in the colonial period

 

Eine Hauptseminararbeit von Ronny Diehl (Matrikelnr.:174783)

 im Rahmen des Hauptseminars von Dr. Isensee

“Promoting the Self: Constructions of the Self and the Other in

Early Texts in Colonial America”

 

Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.1.   Introduction                                                                                                    …….3           

2.1.   Revealing the inner workings of our brain – it is plastic                              …….3

 

2.2.   The Two Hemispheres                                                                       …….5

 

2.3.   The Phonetic Alphabet                                                                                   …….6

 

2.4.   Figure and Ground                                                                                         …….7

 

2.5.   Man’s perception of space                                                                            …….9

 

2.6.   The Gutenberg Technology and the impact on Western culture                 ……10

 

3.1.      Native spirituality – how is the world constructed – Indian worldview

 – religion, nature, community and the individual                                         ……11

 

3.2.   Creation and Reciprocity                                                                               ……12

 

3.3.   Native Americans and their original concept of Time                                  ……14

 

3.4.   Deity and the notion of duality                                                                      ……16

 

3.5.   Ethics concerning will – what is the difference to the Christian notion of sin.17

 

3.6.   How did Natives perceive land?                                                                    …….18

 

4.1.   White man’s construct of the Indian – analysing written documents of the....18 colonization period

 

5.1.   Bibliography                                                                                                   …….23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.1.  Introduction

 

 

At the moment in time when Anglo-European settlers and the Native Americans faced one another for the first time two very different worldviews were colliding. We will try to show in this analysis that they not only differed in their worldview, but that their modes of perception and cognition were quite different from one another.  Today, we have reached a point in history where we are able to comprehend the inner workings of man’s psyche and its changes to his environment and his fellow man. We will find out that man’s worldview is largely determined by the means through which he communicates.

At the time the New World, was discovered by European explorers, Northern Europe, England especially, was in a state of severe change in all aspects of society. With the technique of print technology, a change in human perception and cognition was under way which would change human history forever. In this paper, at first, we will try to explain why there are different modes of perception and, one could even say, human awareness. We will look into the newest findings Neuroscience which reveals how people with different cultural backgrounds perceive differently.  We will then look into the workings of the phonetic alphabet which could be said is the cradle of Western civilization because it trains the mind to only perceive reality in visual abstract terms. Therefore, through its use man is able to detach himself from nature and his fellow man. The technique of the phonetic alphabet enabled man to think analytically and develop science.  

The paper then will draw a broad picture of Native American worldview which is largely shaped by an understanding we today call animism. Finally, we will look into texts of early and later periods of American colonization and discuss them in our new perspective.

It needs to be said that in this paper we will often use terms in a very generalized fashion such as ‘the Indians or the Natives’ or the ‘settler’s’ or ‘Asian’ knowing that  these are terms that do not reflect the diversity of cultures which come with them. But when we will try to discuss man’s history in such a broad perspective as in media theory, generalization are helpful in revealing facts of change and development.      

 

 

2.1. Revealing the inner workings of our brain – it is plastic

 

“At no period in human culture have men understood the psychic mechanisms involved in invention and technology. ….”[1]

 

Today, man has reached the point in history where for the first time he fully can become aware of the processes that are involved in his cognition and perception. More and more, it becomes clear how our perception of reality is culturally biased and that these biases are not just habits that we internalize through acculturation. Our brain itself is modified and undergoes structural changes depending on the culture, or more specifically, the influences to which it is exposed to. To determine these influences and to bring them to our awareness will be one of the major tasks of our generation as well as the next. At the same time, we need to become aware of how our consciousness and perception is influenced and framed based on the inner structure of our brain, as well as the interplay of our senses.

In Neuroscience, we are discovering that our brain is not at all a static structure which, once it has grown to its full size, will not change. We learn that our brain can change drastically and modify to new circumstances. This is called the plasticity of the brain and it becomes evident when a severe change in our ability to interact with the world has occurred, for example, the loss of one of our senses due to an accident.

When we lose a sense – hearing, for example – other senses become more active and more acute to make up for the loss. But they increase not only the quantity of their processing but also the quality, becoming more like the lost sense. …deaf people intensify their peripheral vision to make up for the fact that they can’t hear things coming from a distance. People who can hear use their parietal vision, whereas the deaf use their visual cortex, at the back of the brain. Change in one brain module – here a decrease in output – leads to structural and functional change in another brain module, so that the eyes of the deaf come to behave much more like ears, more able to sense the periphery.[2]  

 

As revealed in the book The Brain that changes itself , the human brain has an amazing capability to restructure - and this goes hand in hand with the interplay of the human senses, because the brain has a tendency to adjust to the new circumstances by balancing and finding an equilibrium in synesthesia.

However, the brain also changes in its biological structure when, for example, reading is taught to children.[3] It alters and enlarges the visual modules of the brain. Experiments show that “each medium creates a different sensory and semantic experience – and, we might add, develops different circuits in the brain.”[4]  Moreover, each medium stimulates different parts of the brain, depending on its own character and structure. For example, hearing induces stimulation on the right-hemisphere whereas reading on the left-hemisphere. At this point in our analysis, we are confronting one of the most fundamental discoveries on which Marshall McLuhan’s work is largely based on, by which he meant that “[t]he entire world, past and present, now reveals itself to us like a growing plant in an enormously accelerated movie”.[5]  He was certain that through all our media which are an extension of our central nervous system, man has reached a point in history where he becomes conscious of the inner workings of his consciousness itself. All of a sudden, he is able to see and understand the progress of his development, based on the assumption that the explanation of human progress lies in the very nature of consciousness balancing and restructuring itself due to cultural changes of sense ratio.

 

2.2. The Two Hemispheres

 

The two hemispheres of the human brain have two distinctive and opposite ways of perception and cognition processing. The left-hemisphere, the one predominantly in all Western cultures, is responsible for logical and intellectual thinking. It is the sphere that processes everything in visual terms and, therefore, it is regarded as the sphere of the ‘eye’. All knowledge in science is based on the bias of left-hemisphere’s analytical, mathematical, sequential processing which tends to be detail oriented. It perceives in quantitative measures and is responsible for reading, writing and naming. Other characteristics

 

  [6]

In contrast, the right-hemisphere is the receptive sphere (the left is the active one), responsible for emotions, creativity and holistic processing. It is regarded as the spatial and tactile hemisphere, which has the ability to recognize patterns and complex figures and comprehend simultaneously. It perceives in qualitative measures and does facial recognition. Finally, its musical and acoustic mode of perception makes it the sphere or the ‘ear’.[7]

Interestingly enough, the history of mankind has so far been a dualistic one. The Occident has perceived reality mainly in quantitative measures and visual terms, the Orient and all other non-literate cultures (and as we will argue specifically, Native Americans) in qualitative and holistic ones. Even today it becomes evident how perception differs depending on our cultural background.   

These experiments and many others like them confirm that Easterners perceive holistically, viewing objects as they are related to each other or in context, whereas Westerners perceive them in isolation.[8]

 

            The question remains why there is such a difference, why is it that Western man adopted this mode of left-hemisphere thinking, whereas other cultures prefer right-hemisphere (or at least a rather balanced mode)?

 

2.3. The Phonetic Alphabet

 

Western history was shaped for some three thousand years by the introduction of the phonetic alphabet, a medium that depends solely on the eye for comprehension. The alphabet is a construct of fragmented bits and parts which have no semantic meaning in themselves, and which must be strung together in line, bead-like, and in a prescribed order. Its use fostered and encouraged the habit of perceiving all environment in visual and spatial terms – particularly in terms of a space and of a time that are uniform,

                                                                              c,o,n,t,i,n,u,o,u,s,

                                                                              and

                                                                              c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d .[9]

 

Like no other script, the Phonetic Alphabet is mathematical code of the spoken language. No other script writing achieved this level of abstraction.  The Phoenicians’ alphabet was not yet a ‘complete phonetic’ alphabet when the Greeks adopted it. It consisted only of consonants – the vowels were left out and had to be filled in by the reader.  In the process of adapting this technique of phonetic script writing into their own language, the Greeks (probably merchants who had contact with Phoenicians) mistakenly used signs for weak Phoenician consonants that did not exist in Greek language for their vowels. Due to this unintended error, the Greeks were the first to have a complete ‘written code’ of their oral language.[10]  It is in the very character of this code where we can identify the cradle of Western culture. 

The phonetic alphabet enhances and stimulates left-hemisphere processing by its uniform, continuous and sequential character. But to fully understand the workings of the phonetic alphabet, we have to understand how the alphabet achieves this level of abstraction in contrast to other script writing techniques.

 

2.4. Figure and Ground

 

In order to grasp the difference between the distinctive forms of perception of the two hemispheres, we need to look at the difference between figure and ground.  In general, as we have seen before, the left-hemisphere processes information by concentrating on detail. It perceives with the eye, which means that it has a tendency to only ‘see’ objects rather than background. This becomes obvious when we look at the paintings of Japanese and Chinese ancient artist and their love for the space within. The space between objects for them has played a more important role than the objects themselves – what they tried to achieve is to let the beholder fill in the ‘space within’ and therefore behold the ‘hidden’ ground. In stark contrast to Western art, especially the art of Renaissance and later periods where the objects or the people were ‘objectively’ represented leaving no space at all for the beholder to fill in – in fact, the suggestive art of Asia is the very opposite of the Renaissance.[11]

 Edgar Rubin brought the difference between figure and ground to attention with later became known for Gestalt Psychology. He was first who demonstrated the difference between figure and ground by drawing pictures that could be seen or rather processed in two distinctive ways.[12] The two faces facing each other and, thereby, forming a vase is probably the most famous one. In more recent applications, there are models in which the beholder either sees a Gestalt in two distinctive ways – for example, seeing a dancer turning clockwise or in the opposite direction – and thereby, one can make a clear distinction between right or left-hemisphere usage. [13]

In general, people who are left-hemisphere dominated rather see the figures than background or one could say that the only could the vase or the faces but not both – they perceive exclusive rather than inclusive. New scientific findings in Neuroscience conclude that even the most basic activity such as ‘seeing’ or looking at an object is culturally biased. “Easterners see through a wide-angle lens; Westerners use a narrow one with a sharper focus”[14]. Hence, when Easterners look upon a picture with various objects on it, they see the relation of the objects in their position to each other – one could just say they observe the pattern – whereas Westerners rather will remember individual objects after having been exposed to look upon such picture for a specific amount of time.

Just taking a look into a Chinese ideogram and its inner workings, it becomes clear why we see so differently. “For the ideogram is an inclusive gestalt, not an analytic dissociation of senses and functions like the phonetic writing”.[15]  In the phonetic alphabet, the gap between figure and ground operates on a high level, because it makes a clear distinction between the sounds and written words – language being the ground and the written visual code the figure. Hence, the visual sense has been given the power to control the ear or as McLuhan has put it literate has been given “an eye for an ear.”[16]  

 

 

Like no other script, or media, the phonetic alphabet implies that language is something superimposed on the world. In contrast, an ideographic script, for example, seems to de-emphasize such a duality between thought and words, between meaning and reality, encouraging instead the view that thought is (part of) reality, because the ideographic character still retains components of the real world and, therefore, does not make this clear distinction between figure and ground – the ground remains to be part of the figure (script). What you have left in the phonetic alphabet are only figures without ground. And, visual abstract figures highly stimulate the left-hemisphere mode of perception and cognition. Therefore, McLuhan concluded that a figure without ground is logic. Logic is nothing more than cutting the figures off the ground and stringing them together into a tight web.[17]  

The left-hemisphere paradigm of quantitative measurement and precision recently re-explicated by some neurophysiologists, depends on a hidden ground which was never thouroughly discussed by scientists in any field. That hidden ground is the acceptance of visual space as the norm of science and rational endeavour. [18]

 

This new logic inherent in the phonetic alphabet gave the Greeks a powerful tool to detach themselves from nature and conceive the world in visual terms, which is what we call rational.[19]   Hence, Euclidean geometry, the foundation for Western mathematical and analytical thought was entirely based on the assumption that objects – now conceived as detached from their ground – were rationally detached from man, making him capable of becoming the ‘objective observer’. Comparing the four Euclidean axioms with philosophic syllogisms of the Eastern tradition, for example, Buddhism, it becomes evident that, although objects are also ‘objectively’ conceived by the observer, they remain part of the observer, because how they are seen depends on the beholder’s state of mind. In Asian traditions as well as that of primitive people[20] such as Native Americans, the paradox relationship between observer and the observed remains a dynamic one, because the relationship is understood as in constant flux, in contrast to Western tradition where it is static due to left-hemisphere dominated perception.[21]  

The impact of the phonetic culture has been elaborately explained by McLuhan in his most important books The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media. He writes that “…the separation of the individual from the group in space (privacy), and in thought (“point of view”), and in work (specialism), has had a cultural and technological support of literacy, and its attendant galaxy of fragmented industrial and political institutions”.[22]  With literacy, he especially refers to alphabetic literacy. Although any form of writing enhances the ‘eye’ and therefore visual perception, “…phonetic writing, alone, has the power of separating and fragmenting the senses and of sloughing off the semantic complexities”.[23] When the Greeks adopted the technique of the phonetic alphabet, their tribal culture collapsed and a society which praised individuality, entrepreneurship and democracy emerged.

 

 

2.5. Man’s perception of space

 

The alphabet separated and isolated visual space from the many other kinds of sensory space involved in the senses of smell, touch, kinaesthesia, and acoustics. Abstract visual space is lineal, homogenous, connected and static.[24]

 

What McLuhan is saying here is that Western man lives in the left-hemisphere bias of visual space, where everything has to have continuity and linearity. His notion of cause and effect, derived from the lineal and continuous form of visual space, made him become the objective scientific observer who cuts off all his other senses from his visual experience. When everything is perceived in continuous relation, the interval or the space ‘in between’ is filled by rational logic. The opposite can be said about Asian man, to whom the space ‘in between’ is what constitutes reality.  In the Asian tradition, art is about ‘the principle of suggestion’ where the viewer has to become part of the art piece himself. It is in the beholder’s mind where the space ‘in between’ is filled and the art piece is completed.[25]  That is what reflects the essence of Eastern philosophy and art, where the art of flower arrangements is about harmonizing the space in between them and Laotse said that the space between the axle and the wheel is what constitutes the wheel.[26]   

Therefore, non-literate or oral cultures live in acoustic space. Acoustic space is the space perceived by the right-hemisphere. Its characteristics are non-homogenous and discontinuous where the ‘resonant and interpenetrating processes are simultaneously related with centers everywhere and boundaries nowhere.[27]   

In contrast, the properties of visual space are “continuous which is to say infinite, divisible, extensible and featureless”…” connected (abstract figures with fixed boundaries, linked logically and sequentially but having no visible grounds), homogenous (uniform everywhere), and static (qualitatively unchangeable)”.[28]

 

2.6.   The Gutenberg Technology and the impact on Western culture

 

Print technology, McLuhan regards as the second major break in Western man’s history. With typography, left-hemisphere perception was dramatically increased. It is in the very nature of Print that Renaissance culture emerged with protestant work ethic, the rise of capitalism and money, individualism with its affinity for the point of view and identity (which also resulted in nationalism), and the rise of the scientific method and its subsequent division into the various fields of science (increase in specialism – which manifests itself in all other realms of Renaissance life as well).

The Print technology of Gutenberg tremendously increased the visual mode of perception, especially in its accurate uniform, repetitive and sequential character.  Medieval culture had remained in a rather acoustic mode of perception. With the invention of Print, a dramatical shift began. England was the country that adopted the printing technique with most vigour and less resistance from the church. Therefore, it is of no coincidence that protestant culture evolved there the most.  The most radical groups which questioned the sovereign and which put all their faith on their printed bibles assembled into dangerous groups which threatened the very existence of the English monarchy. The first major settlements in America were founded by members of these radical groups. The Puritans left England in the hope living their new form of religion and worldview on the shores of the new world and thereby meeting people which had quite different worldviews to theirs.

 

3.1.   Native spirituality – how is the world constructed – Indian worldview – religion, nature, community and the individual

 

 

Native American worldview is in many aspects very different to the Western worldview. We will discover that they differ in most issues concerning the individual and the community, land and notion of time.  Native Americans (and all aboriginal cultures) have right hemissphere mode of perception.  Most importantly, they are oral and tribal cultures in which the community is the most important entity and is valued higher than the individual. Native theology is totally centered on and in the community.  Human beings are not privileged over the rest of the world, nor are individuals privileged over the good of the whole community.[29]  “…The closest approximation of the Christian notion of sin in Native traditions is a failure to live up to one’s responsibilities to the community.” [30]

Therefore, the notion of having an opinion which would regard one’s own ideas more important, which would consider one’s own life more important, which would think that one’s own worldview or religious concepts better or closer to the truth, to god and the divine is beyond any notion of a native mindset.  One could say that many of Native American values (especially the ones concerning the individual which should live to its responsibilities for the whole community) are similar to the ones of the first colonizers of New England. Nevertheless, the Puritans and many of the other religious groups which later followed do share specific traits contrary to the ones of the natives, especially their worldview on nature and the personhood of the divine in all things, the non-existence of the notion of sin and the dualistic concept of heaven and hell as in the Christian faith. Overall, the early and later settlements of white colonist share one specific trait which we do not observe among the Indian nations: they lack unity.  From the beginning on, the religious groups did not share an overall unity – there were many rebellious individuals such as Anne Hutchinson which rejected the ideas of the majority.  A splitting up of the majority and the formation of new groups and also a search for a new land for the new group was the result and often led to new colonies (and later States).  It is a specific character of western culture that celebrates the individual and each person’s point of view.  We have seen earlier how the phonetic alphabet enhanced left-hemisphere perception which favours objectivity and therefore a point of view or observer mode of perceiving.  

Although, it would rather be misleading to talk about any notion of salvation as in Christianity in the Native belief system, because it completely lacks any idea of sin, it could be said that “Salvation is the continuance of the community”.[31]  Native American Spirituality is not about dogma, not about a set of rules which are implemented by a theocratic leadership under which the members of the group have succumb and follow or otherwise be excluded or in many cases die (especially in Medieval and later Renaissance periods, people were killed because they would not follow the rules of the theocratic rulers).  Native Spirituality requires a continual participation of each member in creating a relationship with creation that, most prominently, is reflected by the abundance of rituals.[32] 

 

 

3.2.   Creation and Reciprocity

 

In order to understand Native American spiritual practises, we need to look at the spiritual concept surrounding creation and reciprocity. First of all, creation is understood as a matter of give and take. Whatever the community or the individual takes from the creation (nature) compensation for what has been taken is needed. “Creation…is about balance and the respect and reciprocity necessary to maintain balance in the world around us.” [33] Rituals are the best means whereby the group or the person maintains a balance with creation.  “All of creation is alive – because it is filled with our relatives. Yet, we need to eat and therefore have to take. So when we take we also give something to remind ourselves that we have taken at the cost of our relatives.” [34]  It is in this constant practises or rituals which are necessary to maintain a balance in the relationship of the community and creation in order “to maintain the world for our children and the coming generations.” [35] 

Secondary is the knowledge when and how creation began – “to know our rightful place in the world and to live accordingly” is most important. [36] Knowledge of creation is transmitted to the next generations by oral myths which are not fixed but changed by every generation into their current situation. The power of knowledge which has been fixed in the written format and amplified by the mechanical reproduction is foreign to the Native American people. They look into nature in a holistic mode whereby they feel the presence of an all-pervading spiritual power.  “Native people believe that they share the world with spiritual beings with whom they must establish relationships.”[37] The created world – everything in it by which they mean even rocks and trees – is alive and sentient as human beings are. For Native Americans we are related to all the sentient beings in creation.

 

Reciprocity means the understanding of the cosmos as sacred and alive. [38] It is the knowledge and understanding of the place of humans in the process of the cosmic whole - anything and everything that humans do has an effect on the rest of the world.  The knowledge of the effects of each action was the purpose of most creation stories as well as what ritual was needed in order to re-establish the balance within the cosmos.[39]

Any act of violence, that is, for example, an act of necessity like in hunting needs some act of reciprocity in order to establish a renewed balance, because killing animals means killing relatives.[40] Therefore, hunters that are coming back from hunting need to stay separate and apart from the main village and have to purify themselves through prayers and rituals of ceremonial cleansing. Respect for all living beings means apologies and words of thanksgiving to the animal’s spirit nation. These acts of ceremony are the best and only means through which man must engage and cleans himself of the negative energy. “The input of human energy into the environment through ceremony is more important than the physical activities of hunting, gathering, and cultivating.”[41]

            Perceiving the material world as alive and filled with Spirit Power, man does not own anything. Of course, man has his weapons, tools, shelter, horses or other animals etc., but he cannot claim that he really owns them on the spiritual level, because all these things are alive.   “In actuality the only thing a person really owns and can sacrifice is one’s own flesh. Thus ceremonies of self-sacrifice tend to be the most significant ceremonies of a people.”[42] Therefore, the most powerful ceremonies are those ones in which the attendants suffer with their flesh and blood in order to gain spiritual power. Most prominently are Vision Quests like the Sun Dance which are celebrated each summer solstice by the Sioux Nations. Suffering for the community is the highest form of respect and reciprocation.

 

            3.3.   Native Americans and their original concept of Time

 

First of all, Native Americans have no linear understanding in terms of a historical past where creation began as in the bible.  The native tradition is a non-linear understanding of time. In creation stories, creation began in a distant past but is an ongoing process, a constant creative flux that requires our continual participation. [43]  The Native mindset is not so much concerned with what happened in the past or what is going to happen in the future – what is most important is the constant participation with the present and be in balance with the spirit powers.  

Western man’s concept of linear time (the notion of time as linear and sequential is the result of alphabet literacy and enhanced by the print technology) as a past, a present and a future is most obviously expressed through our languages.  However, Native American languages do not have the same features of time as linear construct.  In the Hopi Indian language, for example, there are “no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time.” [44] The notion of history conceived in a distant past as in progress, evolution and development are concepts born out of the Renaissance period. It is highly connected to Gutenberg technology which enhanced Western man’s linear and sequential mode of perception.

For Native Americans, time and the universe is conceived in a circle.[45] The nature of time and reality as conceived in a cyclical, circular form is reflected in the stories about cyclical destruction and renewal that have been commonly known by many tribes. The Hopi Indians particularly have a prophecy that predicts a period of koyaanisquatsi, or life out of balance, followed by a period of “Great Purification.” [46] The most important symbol for Plain Indians is the Circle. The Circle is the symbol which reflects Native philosophy in the best possible way. In the native worldview, there are no hierarchies – there is no beginning nor is there an end in time. In the circle, everyone is of equal value and, therefore, all relatives are of equal value. No chief is valued above other members, nor are animals of less value than humans.

Natives are rooted in world view shaped by reciprocity and spatiality that means that the native notion of time is deeply connected with spatial relationships. The annual periodic cycles of the sun and the moon and the earth are ceremonial determinatives for the spatial relationship between the community and the sun at solstice, for example. Although, there are remnants of a similar understandings in western culture, for example, in the Sonnenwendfeier  in Germany, the Western calendar and the clock has divided the year into days, the days into hours and minutes and the connection of space with time has become marginal.[47]  Moreover, for Native Americans, the spiritual relationship between the community and the specific territories it inhabits plays a crucial role in the understanding why they feel responsible for the places and all the beings including rocks and trees.  Overall, they perceive themselves as part of nature; one could say they perceive nature as ground rather than the objective figures of nature as in science. For Natives, there is no reason for objective observation celebrated by western philosophers such as Aristotle or Descartes.  It is in the very nature of the phonetic alphabet and later amplified by print that empowers humans to detach themselves from nature and the community and observe nature objectively out of the point of view.  Hence, the power of naming everything and categorizing nature as in the Linnaean classification system is something foreign to Native American worldview.[48]    

 

 

3.4.   Deity and the notion of duality

 

“Spirit without matter is motion without substance; matter without spirit is motionless and meaningless.” [49]

 

Native spiritual concepts are often based on the notion of duality as representing wholeness as a necessary reciprocity opposed to oppositional dualism of western culture.  

Good and Evil, female and male, matter and spirit are all manifestations of God. Roles of men and women are complementary and are not in hierarchic system as established by the Christian doctrine.[50]  God has male and female properties as Creation itself  – Earth and Sky, Grandmother and Grandfather,  Day and Night. In the Lakota tradition,  “[w]akan Tanka are many. But they are all the same as one… The Sun is Wakan Tanka, and Sky the Earth and the Rock. They are Wakan Tanka.”[51]  Wakan Tanka or Wakoda is to be found everywhere and in all things. Yet the material world is not to be confused with the deities – they can manifest or be recognized in some, but most commonly they are experienced through spirits.[52] The manifestations of Wakan Tanka are very complex, far more than in the Christian mystery of the trinity of god.  In the native tradition, the manifestations are most often connected with daily experiences with the forces of nature and therefore are readily discernible and accessible unlike the Christian doctrine of the father, the Son and the Holy Ghost which are rather intellectual and emotional states – creative, giving and communicative.[53]     

 

“Implicitly and explicitly, American Indians are driven by their culture and spirituality to recognize the personhood of all things in creation.”[54] The circle is also the best symbol for the native understanding of creation and the universe. Again, there is no hierarchy – man is a co-equal participant in god’s creation.  All beings, including all the spirits participate together and in their own way to preserve the wholeness of the circle as the symbol for reciprocity and inter-relatedness and interdependence, balance and mutual respect for one another. 

 

 

 

 

3.5.   Ethics concerning will – what is the difference to the Christian notion of sin

 

Dreams, vision quests, and initiation rites give Indians access to spiritual power.

All ethics deal with the issue of will in how man deals with that power.  Will can involve decisions to use power gained from a relationship with a spirit in either beneficial or destructive ways.[55]  Constraints and secrecy in initiation rites and the ineffable nature of visionary experiences makes the true power of an individual unknowable to others. The true power can only be known through his human behaviour and its results.  In the native tradition, the idea of evil is associated with witchcraft and the power to control others. To control another person’s actions is to deprive him/her of freedom of action.  Appropriate behaviour is the basis for ethical behaviour. What is most important for all Indian communities is the integrity of the individual and to exercise his/her responsibility according to the family and community.  The worst thing to be said of an individual was to say that he or she acted “as if  they had no relatives” [56]

In Christianity, the fall of humanity was complete and the single redemptive act was the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. For Natives, through the power of ceremony human beings renew their worlds on a regular basis. Deity is immanent power and humans interact with powers regularly and can restore the world to a state of initial perfection. When power is immanent, the notion of afterlife is of less significance.[57]  In Christianity, sin is a personal matter – the individual has to fear the purgatory and hell. In Native cultures it is a matter of responsibility to the whole community to behave properly and retain a balance within creation.

The complexity of the Indian belief system and their understanding of human nature is best reflected in the mythical figure of the trickster Coyote or Iktomi – many tribes have similar stories involving this notorious and well-known figure. It is not the devil nor is he evil as stigmatised by Christians. The trickster embodies the good and bad – the duality of human existence.  

“Trickster is a breaker of barriers, and an eraser of boundaries. He moves between heaven and earth, between deity and mortals, between the living and the dead. He is also the ultimate symbol of the ambiguity of good and evil and the essential statement of the human condition. Human beings may aspire to ultimate goodness, but they are subject to basic impulses and desires.”

 

 

 

3.6.   How did Natives perceive land?

 

The term “land” is best understood in spiritual concepts, because it includes land, sea, and sky, as well as wind, rain, fire, light, human and animal life.  Land is alive with Spirit power and man can and must seek this power through constant participation. Land or earth is related to the specific place a specific tribe inhabits.  Land is given the name in each language to the specific region a tribe inhabits.[58]

Therefore, today we can understand why Tecumseh said “Sell land? You might as well sell air and water!” when he was asked by whites to make further concessions of land to them. 

One cannot ‘sell’ land because one cannot ‘own’ land.   Land can only be ‘used’ -  but only in the reciprocal sense of respect.  Many contemporary tribes today own their land communally and try to resist the Western notion of property own by the individual. Perceiving everything in an acoustic mode, the earth is conceived in a qualitative sense rather than in a quantitative sense.[59]   

 

4.1.   White man’s construct of the Indian – analysing written documents of the colonization period

 

            In the book Intercultural America, Robert Sattelmayer states that “the analysis of Indian/European relations in early American Literature and culture” has been neglected.  He further argues that a lot of the history of that time remains to be a myth - often marginalized into the myth of the violent savages which had to be civilized - and guesses that this might be because Americans want to feel less guilty about the period of colonization which in many aspects was a genocide among the natives.[60]  The savage and his brutality against the white settlers, as often described by the early colonizers, is what most often remained to be the final depiction of the Natives, as stated by William Bradford in his descriptions of the Indian: “By all which it may appear how far these people were from peace, and with what danger this plantation was begun, save as the powerful hand of the lord did protect them.”[61]

Sattelmeyer explores a document about the Native people from the late 18^th century. William Bartram travelled throughout the states as a botanical surveyor and wrote about his Travels.   Due to his assignment, he had to visit many Native tribes and these experiences among them provided for most of his writing. Uncommonly, for most of his contemporaries, he questions the white man’s stereotypical thinking about the Natives, most commonly depicted as savages. He asked himself if, first of all, the Indians were uncivilized and, secondly, if civilizing them were of any beneficial to whole public.[62] Interestingly, he comes to the conclusion that “[v]irtually nothing, in sum, except literacy and manufactured goods differentiates Indian society from “civilization” as understood by the Europeans.”[63]   He observed that the Creeks and the Cherokees, indeed, had extensive agricultural farming which produced high surpluses – a fact that the European colonizer always put on the forefront as an argument for conquest, asserting that the Indians did not use their land efficiently.[64] 

            Bartram wrote extensively about the Indian ethics which as we have observed before are circled around the family and honour:

“…it is apparent to an impartial observer, who resides but a little time amongst them, that it is from the most delicate sense of the honour  and reputation of their tribes and families, that their laws and customs receive their force and energy. This is the divine principle which influences their moral conduct, and solely preserves their constitution and civil government in that purity in which they are found to prevail amongst them.”[65]  

 

Another episode reveals how the European mindset is of a completely opposite disposition than the Native American one. Bartram tells of a story about a peace treaty that had been made between the colonizers and the Indians in which the Natives conceded a great deal of land to the settlers. Having to mark the new boundaries, a group of Indians and settlers took on the enterprise by walking up the line. The chief surveyor was using his compass to follow the line as his reference on which the treaty was agreed on. A dispute arouse after the Indian chief rejected the chief surveyor’s statement that the compass could not be wrong, pointing to a different direction the border would follow. In the end, the dispute was ended by the agreement that the compass was to be discarded as a tool of reference.[66]  Rarely, in the history of colonization did the Indian (with his deeply attached mindset to the land) won an argument with the European settler (seeing land as a means for efficient cause and property). The compass - an instrument and symbol for the mechanical worldview shaped by the visual space perception - lost against the acoustic sensibility of the tribal man to whom land was not detached from emotion and experience.

 

            Benjamin Franklin was not a person which favoured just one mode of perception. He was open to different points of view and therefore drew a much more critical observation of his own contemporaries and their stereotypical thinking about the Indians. His first statement in his Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America is therefore concerned with different points of perspective:

“Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours,  which we think perfection of civility;  they think the same of theirs.”[67]       

His first observations are concerned with the tribal and oral nature of their culture. 

“The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counselors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages; there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment. Hence they generally study oratory, the best speaker having the most influence.”[68]

 

He rightly observed that the Indian nations lack any kind of institutions of penalty or reward, prisons or a police force which in the Europe and the New World had become normality. Secondly, Franklin asserts that - oral communication being the only form of intellectual discussion - the study of oratory is most important to the people.  Rhetoric and eloquence was considered the highest form of wisdom in ancient Greece. The change to favour analytical knowledge after the phonetic alphabet shifted the mode of perception in the Gregorian society has been extensively discussed by Marshall McLuhan in The Gutenberg Galaxy.  Nevertheless, it is revealing that Franklin was conscious of the oral nature of Native culture and that he put it right in the beginning of his description of the savages.

            Franklin was reflective enough to question the protestant work ethic compared to the Indian way of life which “have few artificial wants”. [69] He compares the different attitudes by telling a story of an official meeting between the Government of Virginia an d the Six Nations where the Indians were offered to send half a dozen of their young men to colleges, but rejected the offer, because their experience had shown them that people who had studied at colleges came back completely useless not being able to live and survive in the traditional native way.[70]

            Franklin also discusses the Indian customs in conversation and counsel.  Franklin praises their custom of listening to a speaker until he or she has said everything he wanted to without interrupting him or her.  “To interrupt one another, even in a common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent.”[71] Furthermore, Franklin explains how Indian custom differs in debate to the European - especially the Anglo-European and North American which favours a discussion in the form of stating ones point of view. “The politeness of these savages in conversation is indeed carried to excess, since it does not permit them to contradict or deny the truth of what is asserted in their presence.” “It is mere civility” that does not permit them to contradict what has been said and therefore the missionaries had to face the difficult task to convince the Indians without really knowing if they truly were convinced.[72]

Franklin gives another example of such a dispute between a missionary and a native who after having heard of the story of Adam and Eve and the fall, replies to the missionary by telling him a mythic tale of their own tradition.  However, the missionary with his bible in hand - and his point of view of what he considered the holy truth - rejects the story as “mere fable, fiction and falsehood.”[73]  The nature of the printed phonetic word in the bible has always been a powerful tool to dominate other cultures, specifically oral ones.  The bible functioned not only as medium for proselytizing, but also as conquering medium which transformed oral tribal man into literate man.  Nevertheless, here in Franklin’s story, the Indian responds in a manner typical of a person who cherishes an acoustic way of perception with no fixed point of view:

“My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?”[74] 

 

It is in the nature of acoustic space that man is aware of the fact that truth is a matter of perspective.  Nature and thought is conceived not as fixed as in mechanical worldview but rather depending on your own position.

Benjamin Franklin tried to reveal the nature of Indian customs by reflecting on his own culture in the Indian perspective.  In contrast, William Bradford, being one of the first Puritan settlers depicted a counsel of Indian elders which met to decide whether to make peace with the Puritan intruders of their land in a quite a different way:

“…they got all the Powachs [75] of the country, for three days together in a horrid and devilish manner to curse  and execrate them with their conjurations, which assembly and service they held in a dark and dismal swamp.”[76]  

Typically, the Natives are described in a dark and devil-like manner which reveals early misunderstandings of their culture.  Others, like Roger Williams openly confess their fear towards their very different customs.

“I confesse to have most of these their customes by their owne Relation, for after once being in their Houses and beholding what their Worship was, I durst never bee an eye witnesse, Spectatour, or looker on, least I should have been partaker of Sathans Inventions and Worships, contrary to Ephes. 5. 14.” [77]

 

Roger Williams’ A Key to the Language of America is illustrative in how Anglo-European man with even good intentions lacks the ability to understand the Indian perspective, although the colonizers considered themselves superior to them. Williams produces a great deal of detail by trying to understand their language and almost like in a dictionary delivers lists of words of specific themes as ‘War’ and ‘Religion’.  Nonetheless, he does not understand the Indian belief in God who he states has so many and all different – he then gives a list of the gods of the four directions, the god of the children, woman and house.[78] 

Besides there is a generall Custome amongst them, at the apprehension of any Excellency in Men, Women, Birds, Beasts, Fish, &c. to cry out  Manittóo, that is, it is a God, as thus if they see one man excel others in Wisdome, Valour, strength, Activity &c. they cut out Manittóo a God: and therefore when they talke amongst themselves of the English ships, and great buildings, of the plowing of their Fields, and especially of Bookes and Letters, they will end thus: Manittôwock They are Gods: Cummanittôo, you are God, &c. A strong Conviction naturall in the soule of man, that God is; filling all things, and places, and that all Excellencies dwell in God, and proceed from him, and that they only are blessed who have that Jehovah their portion. [79]

 

Williams understood the transcendentalism and animism which is one of the main traits of Native spirituality. However, giving all the examples when Natives would recall god because they would experience or see something which they considered of godly nature, he finds himself in odds with their naiveté in believing in all these different gods.  If he would have examined the nature of their tribal and oral nature, he probably would have come up with a different assessment. McLuhan states that “[t]he myth, like the aphorism and maxim, is characteristic of oral culture. For, until literacy deprives language of his multi-dimensional resonance, every word is a poetic world unto itself, “a momentary deity” or revelation, as it seemed to non-literate men.”[80]   

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.1.  Bibliography

 

 

Clara Sue Kidwell, Homer Noley, George E. Tinker. A Native American Theology. Orbis Books. Maryknoll, NY. 2001

 

Bradford, William; Franklin, Benjamin; Williams, Roger. Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Sixth Edition. Norton&Company. New York. 2003

 

 

Doidge, Norman.  The Brain that changes itself. Penguin Books.  London 2007

 

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. University Press of Toronto. 1962

 

McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. Penguin Books. London. 1967

 

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. Routledge. New York. 2001 

 

McLuhan, M. & Powers, B. The Global Village. Oxford University Press. 1989

 

McLuhan, Marshall. Das Medium ist die Botschaft. Dresden. Verlag der Kunst. 2001

 

 

.           Sattelmeyer, Robert. Intercultural America. Universitätsverlag Winter. Heidelberg. 2005

 

 

 

 

                                       INFLUENCE OF THE PHONETIC SCRIPT AND TYPOGRAPHY ON THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Uniting the ideas of Marshall McLuhan and Alexis de Tocqueville

 

                                                                    Semesterarbeit von Ronny Diehl:  Matrikelnummer174783

 

Im Rahmen des Proseminars

‚Literary and Cultural Representations of American Society: Visual Media’

Dozent: Herr Prof. Dr. R. Isensee

                                                                                                      Berlin, 2006

 

                                     INFLUENCE OF THE PHONETIC SCRIPT AND TYPOGRAPHY ON THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

 

 

Introduction

 

History of the phonetic script and it’s influence on human society

-         Aspect of linguists: how the phonetic alphabet abstracts human thinking

-         Historical aspect: how the Greeks developed the first rational philosophy

-         Anthropological aspect: the phonetic script and it’s influence on the structure of human society

 

Democracy – it’s meaning, character and history

-         The idea of democracy in ancient Greece

-         Early democratic movement in England and how the English settlers brought the idea of democracy to the New World

-         The starting point of Democracy in America – the township republic

-         How the colonists valued education in America

-         Equality and the moral (religious) factor

-         Democracy in America (it’s virgin character in comparison to Europe)

 

How typography contributed on shaping American democracy

-         The early printed press as a multiplying factor in shaping democracy

-         The freedom of the press

-         The distribution of knowledge through imprinted paper in the American colonies

-         The high value of the written and printed word – written laws and the constitution

 

Conclusion

-         The prophecies of  Alexis de Tocqueville

-         Considering Marshall McLuhan’s thesis

-         The future of American democracy – heading back to the ‘tribal community’

 

 

Introduction

 

What is democracy? Of course we know what democracy is – but what is the reason man ‘invented’ democracy? If we want to understand the basis of what democracy is, we also have to understand rationality, because rationality ‘introduced’ democracy - or let’s say that the idea of democracy was the result of rational thinking. If that is so, what is then the character of rational thinking and why was it ‘invented’? As we will see, rational thought was developed due to the use of the phonetic alphabet, and once, we have understood the principles of the phonetic alphabet, we also can reflect upon the character of democracy.

This work will introduce Marshall McLuhan’s main thesis about how the usage of media, hence the phonetic alphabet and later typography influenced the perception of man and consequently the human mind. However, the main focus of this work will lie on the analysis of American democracy in the context of the phonetic alphabet and typography, which both had a fundamental influence on shaping democracy in America. As there is no better observer of American democracy, we will survey Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis and will point to those hints, which connect with the idea of Marshall McLuhan’s thesis.

 

History of the phonetic script and it’s influence on human society

More than 3000 years ago the Phoenicians invented the phonetic alphabet. It was soon adopted by many other nations, in the Occident as well as in the Orient, including the Greeks, the founders of western civilization. As Marshall McLuhan has pointed out, the phonetic alphabet works on the human senses and changes how the human mind perceives things. Once we have understood the whole impact of the phonetic alphabet, we see that it stands as the critical barrier between the primitive and the ‘civilized’ individual – individual in the sense of individualism.[1] However, what is so special about the phonetic alphabet ?

Like no other script the human race had invented before, the phonetic alphabet is unique in its way that it separates the symbols and the sounds from their semantic and intentional meaning. It is the content of the spoken language, by which letters ‘free of meaning’ are used as equivalents to semantic sounds ‘free of meaning’.[2] It’s unique in its way that it creates a gulf between the eye and the ear. The strong division and parallelism between the auditory and visual perception, in which all languages could be transcribed with only a few symbols was revolutionary, but, as McLuhan says, it was also culturally brutal,[3] because it meant a tremendous enhancement of the visual, as well as a lessening of the auditory and also the tactile sense: “Das phonetische Alphabet reduzierte den gleichzeitigen Gebrauch aller Sinne, der sich bei der gesprochenen Sprache einstellt, auf einen rein visuellen Kode.“ [4]

Pictographic and ideographic scripts, which at that time were used by the Egyptians, the Babylonians and other ancient nations and nowadays are still used by the Chinese and others, are forms or photographs of different - personal  or social – situations.[5] They transport verbally conveyed meaning into figuratively metaphorical expression. Hence in the structure of pictographic and ideographic scripts, especially in the Chinese ideogram or the Egyptian hieroglyph, a vast ancient knowledge is transmitted – in contrast to the phonetic written word, which sacrifices whole dimensions of meaning and perception.[6] 

Visual perception is neutral and distant – auditory perception is over-sensitive and all-embracing. The phonetic script intensifies and expands the visual and leads to a decline of the auditory and other senses. In the words of McLuhan:  „Die einfühlende Beteiligung, die der oralen Gesellschaft und dem auditiv-taktilen Menschen von Natur aus entspricht, wird durch das phonetische Alphabet zerstört, das die visuelle Komponente aus dem Gesamtsinneskomplex sprengt. [7]

In a  culture with a phonetic alphabet, people have to learn to keep their visual sense separated from all the other senses in order to be able to read the text, but at the same time they learn to abstract their thoughts from their sensitive faculties. The educated man in western civilization has to endure a strong separation of his world of imagination, feelings and senses.[8] The phonetic alphabet trains the human mind to think in linear-visual structures, in cause and reaction.[9] ‘Continuity, uniformity and linearity’ – the occidental man has become used to thinking in these terms. Accordingly, that whole process of becoming a ‘rational’ human being also resulted in becoming a free individual, who could detach himself from his tribal community.[10]

Only alphabetic cultures have ever mastered connected lineal sequences as pervasive forms of psychic and social organisation. The breaking up of every kind of experience into uniform units in order to

produce faster action and change of form (applied knowledge) has been seen the secret of Western power over man and nature alike. [11]

In cultures and nations where the phonetic alphabet has not been adopted, people still live in their ‘tribal community’. In a tribal community communication is largely based on the oral, which is all-embracing and doesn’t permit a member to detach himself. He hasn’t learned to detach himself from his thoughts and feelings and thus to abstract them and become rational. He is bound to his tribal community by the ‘tyranny of the ear’, as McLuhan says. As long as man has not enhanced the visual component, he only knows the tribal community.[12]

Having understood all these fundamental changes the phonetic alphabet caused on human society, we can understand why and how it were the Greeks who developed and laid the foundation of western civilization. In his book ‘Voice and Text’ Alessandro Portelli cites Jack Goody saying: “The emergence of writing (especially in its alphabetic and, later, typographic forms) freed the human mind from the problem of ‘memory storage’ and allowed humanity to ‘stand back’ from language and examine it in a more abstract generalized, and ‘rational’ way.”[13] The extensive use of this new form of transmitting experience and knowledge enabled them to become ‘rational’ in their thinking and to detach themselves from nature and old mythological world-views[14] - to look at nature using the concept of cause and reaction - as well as to unlink themselves from their tribal community and become individuals.

The pattern of unification, consistency and linearity enabled them, for example, to develop a new structure for warfare, where equal types of warrior groups were formed and were put in line. This concept of efficiency through simplification and division resembled their development of logic through the adoption of the phonetic alphabet.  As a result of the linear and analytical structure, established by the phonetic alphabet, science and rational thought developed, as well as ‘democracy’ - a reaction of the opening of the tribal community, establishing individualism and forcing the people into the same line of thinking.[15]

 

Democracy – it’s meaning, character and history

The people of Athens in ancient Greece were the first who developed and established the idea of democracy. Democracy derives it’s meaning from the Greek words démos  ‘the people’ and kratía  which means power, rule or strength. To put ‘the rule of the people’ into effect, the Greeks in Athens had to overcome the rule of their elite class, the aristocracy and even then only the ‘free man’ (no women, no slaves, no serfs) could vote and participate in political life. Officials and civil servants were, mostly on a temporary basis, elected or decided by drawing lots – everyone could also be elected.[16]

Since the beginning of this new form of government, the established class claimed it a threat to the order of society and said, if the mob were given the right to vote and a share in government, society would eventually turn into chaos - an argument even the famous scholar and philosopher Aristotle wrote in his work ‘Politik’.

The Romans who were much influenced by Greek culture also copied and partially established later the idea of democracy. In the Middle Ages ‘democracy’ had been almost forgotten.

In England, the sharing of power between king and the nobility in parliament had been as early established as 1215 and written down in the ‘Magna Charta’. It is the foundation of the English constitution, which consists of several documents, but unlike many other nations has no real written constitution. Historical events like the Civil war in the 15^th century, the ‘Reformation’ in the early 16^th century and the following break away from the Catholic church, and consequently distributing the property and land of the monasteries among the rural aristocracy, the growing trade with new colonies and the growing wealth among merchants and other businessman forming a new ‘middle class’ in society, the victory of the English fleet over the Spanish Armada in 1588[17], the invention of typography in the 15^th century which produced a tremendous increase on the distribution of knowledge and exchange in information were all reasons why in English society progressive democratic, political and religious ideas flourished at the time when England started to colonize the New World. At that time, the English ‘common law’ already guaranteed self-administration of townships and individual rights and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was even known by the English monarch.[18]

“Die Einwanderer waren weiter Kinder eines Landes und einer Zeit, in denen die Religionskämpfe ihren Höhepunkt erreicht hatten und befruchtend auf die politische, soziale und kulturelle Entwicklung einwirkten.“ [19]As Alexis de  Tocqueville pointed out, in the center of the public debate was the request for religious and political freedom. By the end of the 16^th and the beginning of the 17^th century a lot of different religious groups and sects had formed themselves in England. They all became later known as the ‘Puritans’, because what united them was the believe that a more ‘pure’ faith in God was essential for deliverance, but that also the faithful believer had direct access to God. They set themselves high moral values and restrictions, based on their religion, but at the same time believed in the absolute political freedom of the individual.[20] Their radical ideas made them the enemies of the monarchy and they suffered  from political persecution.

Neither belonging to the aristocracy nor to the common people, neither rich nor poor, the Puritans were members of the new striving independent middle class in England.[21] Economically well situated and in comparison to most of their fellow countrymen well educated, they dedicated themselves to high religious and moral values, as well as to the doctrine of equality and political freedom. Seeing no way to live their beliefs and ideals in their mother country, they left England  to set out an example and  establish a society of their own in the New World.

The first little group of Puritans, who named themselves the ‘Pilgrims’, embarked on the ‘Mayflower’ from Plymouth in the year of 1620 and set sail to the New World and founded the Plymouth Plantation. Ten years later, they were followed by a much larger group of 1000 puritans, who had created the Massachusetts Bay Company in order to establish a new colony with the same name.[22]

With a sense of mission and seeing themselves on an errand to build ‘the city upon the hill’, as John Winthrop, the first famous governor and preacher of the Massachusetts colony proclaimed, they formed the basis of the New England colonies, who would govern themselves independently by their complete own rules and laws. They would establish independent townships and form assemblies as governing bodies. Still loyal to the English monarchy, they built a free theocratic state, which would have the profoundest influence for all other British colonies in North America and  lay the foundation for American society.[23]

The townships formed the basis of the American Democracy. Not like in most European countries, where the state was hierarchical governed and administered from the top to the bottom, the new colonies organized themselves and formed their government in the opposite way – first the townships, then the county and at last the state - later followed the union.[24] Hence, the community is the root from where American democracy and independence grew up. 

The townships would give away part of their independence and obey state power, but only in questions of communal interest and then it were the townships who would implement them. For example, the state legislation decides upon the taxes, but the townships are the ones who collect them; the state instructs to build a school, but it is the township who builds, finances and runs it. In contrast to France, where the state government provides the public officials for the townships, it is the opposite way in America.[25] Therefore, it is the strength and independence of the township community, formed by its autonomous inhabitants, by which American Democracy is shaped.

The people exercise political freedom and independence in their communities – they see and feel the strength of their community, which they actually take part in. However, they also know that only by uniting and forming a strong state government, their independence is protected.  It is this mixed structure of an overall decentralized administration, where administration can hardly be traced, because the people would administer themselves. [26]

‘Das Volk beherrscht die politische Welt Amerikas  wie Gott das All. Es ist Ursache und Ziel aller Dinge; alles geht aus ihm hervor und alles in ihm auf.’ [27]As de Tocqueville says, the principle of the sovereignty of the people is the essential aspect of American democracy. There is no other power in or beyond the community of the people but only the people itself. It means that it is a fully established republic where the community slowly and silently works and acts upon  itself.[28] It is the power of the majority of the people which determines the direction of the society. The moral governance of the majority is based upon the principle that the interests of a greater number deserve priority to a smaller number.[29]

De Tocqueville observed: „Die Kolonien erkennen noch die Oberhoheit des Mutterlandes an; das Gesetz des Staates ist noch die Monarchie; in der Gemeinde jedoch lebt und wirkt schon die Republik.“ [30]  In the townships the people at first truly exercised their political freedom. As most of the puritans came from the middle class in their mother country, their society in contrast reflected no hierarchy, but equality of all members. Puritans saw education as a path to enlightment.[31] Thus most of them were educated, and could read and write. They soon established schools and implemented a tax for their financing – it was a duty for all children to attend them.

This had a tremendous effect on the future of the new settlements giving all members the equal right and access to education, which is one of the great columns on which democracy stands, as its founders the Greeks had declared.[32]

When de Tocqueville wrote about democracy in America 200 years after the first colonies were founded, he said that there is no other country where there are so many educated people but few scholars, giving evidence of the equal chances of education in America.[33] Education in America is largely based on practical experience. Its aim is to prepare its citizens for the political life in contrast to Europe where the aim of education is to prepare for the private life.[34] Education guarantees that all the citizens share a certain amount of ideas and values, which is essential for a democratic society. But the more the equality in life-circumstances in a democratic society increases, the more the people have to learn to unite.[35]

In the first period of the New England colonies, the puritans established a theocratic state where the church could be barely distinguished from the state. They enacted laws which reflected their strict moral standards and religious doctrine. The penal legislation focused especially on criminalizing behaviour which seemed out of the religious code and consequently putting enormous pressure on the conscience of each member of the community.[36] An important point to be considered is that they implemented these laws on their own by democratic voting – they were not forced upon them. This strict morality also guaranteed that the freedom they enjoyed individually did not turn into anarchy. The author comments: „Die Gründer Neu-Englands waren gleichzeitig fanatische Sektierer und überspannte Neuerer. In den allerengsten Banden bestimmter religiöser Bekenntnisse festgehalten, waren sie andererseits frei von allen politischen Vorurteilen.“ [37]

The two elements, the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom both worked hand in hand to form and support the democratic structure of a new growing nation.

 

Democracy brakes with the hierarchical structure of the feudal order – it aligns all levels of society so that the classes grow closer, but at the same time each level finds itself in a independent position where it has to learn to rely on itself. Equality brings man into a position where he has to learn to completely rely on himself and find the basis for his beliefs but also of his thoughts and emotions  in himself.[38]

American society achieved equality after they had experienced political freedom. In that respect democracy was ‘innocently’ established without any revolution in contrast to the European continent, where only through achieving equality first, freedom could be established.[39] In the new world democracy grew to its natural limits by inheriting the great social and democratic changes, without having experienced the great social and democratic changes. The founders and their followers of the new colonies had separated the basic idea of democracy  of all those other ideas – equality – against which it was fought in the old world.[40]

But if man can not achieve freedom in equality for which he has the greatest passion for, he rather chooses to live in servitude. ‘In Europe where religion is on decline and the people losing with their faith also their morals, a new form of tyranny is likely to come’[41] – de Tocqueville foreseeing the coming totalitarian regimes in Europe and many other nations in the following decades and centuries.[42]

The three most important principles which guarantee the preservation of democracy in America are first of all the moral attitude, secondly the laws and at last the physical circumstances.[43] As it was already said, the puritans brought a strong religious and moral code with them that provided the basis for the moral standards. Second of all, the written laws which were implemented and with the young growing nation increased in numbers and importance guaranteed the individual rights and the separation of powers. The written laws reflect the reliance and valuation on the written and printed ‘phonetic’ word.

As we will see, typography was a basic element shaping American democracy.

 

How the written phonetic script and typography contributed on shaping American democracy

 

In historical terms, the written phonetic script and the typography were one of the key issues which lead to the independence of the American colonies from Britain.  By 1765, when the British government imposed a tax on every printed document (newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, deeds, wills, licenses), which was called the ‘Stamp Act’, printing technology had become a central part of colonial life.[44] The Stamp Act affected everyone’s life in the colonies and the British government couldn’t have found a better method to antagonize and unify the colonies against its rule.

As early as 1639, the first printing machine was set up in the colonies of the New World. In 1695 there were more towns with print offices in the colonies than in England, which was the most progressive and technologically advanced nation during that period. At that time, the first published newspaper in Boston had already existed for five years – it was printed with a relatively advanced printing facility.  A large newspaper industry had been established when the British imposed the Stamp Act to raise some of the money they had spent in the ‘French and Indian War’ (in Europe it became known as the ‘Seven years’ war’), which lasted nearly nine years in the colonies and resulted in drawing the French out of their colonies in North America in 1763. [45]

In the following years, the press was highly important in developing a mood hostile to British rule in the colonies. Dissenting leaflets, pamphlets and books circulated widely through the colonies. Since a large part of its citizens could read and write, due to the high value settlers had given on primary education, the press was already a very active power in forming public opinion in the colonies.

 

A free press is the guarantor for freedom in a democracy. De Tocqueville declared : „Die Presse ist das eigentliche Werkzeug der Freiheit.“    In a democracy, equality weakens and isolates the individual -  the individual is in danger of becoming insignificant in the masses. However, the press is the medium which the citizen can use to appeal to his fellow countrymen. The press lead to more equality but it also oversees and limits the evil of equality.[46] According to de Tocqueville: „Die Freiheit der Presse macht sich nicht nur auf dem Gebiet der politischen Meinungsbildung als bewegende Kraft fühlbar, sondern bei jeder menschlichen Meinungsbildung überhaupt. Sie ändert nicht nur die Gesetze, sondern auch die Sitten.“ [47]

A newspaper lives on its readership. It associates thousands of people and influences their thoughts and opinions. At the same day a newspaper can put the same idea about something into thousands of peoples heads. The newspaper brings people closer together and consequently, unites the individuals so they can act as ‘one’.[48]

To be the effective guarantor of freedom in a democracy, the press needs to be free of  censorship. The press suffered colonial restrictions, and some of them were later removed, after a case, concerning defamatory statements on a public official in a newspaper, was won in 1735.[49] In successfully defending the publisher John Zenger in the landmark case, the young lawyer Alexander Hamilton established the precedent, that a statement, even if defamatory, is not libelous if it can be proved, thus affirming freedom of the press in America.[50]

The sovereignty of the people depend on the freedom of the press. In a democracy, where universal suffrage is established, there can not exist censorship at the same time – it would undermine the freedom of expression, which is essential for a democracy. However, the press is also a dangerous power, because of its manipulating effect it can have upon the people. To neutralize the effect of the newspapers upon public is to increase them in numbers.[51] The less centralized a country, the more newspapers are in need to guarantee freedom.[52]

 

The character of American Democracy is highly based on written documents. Since the beginning of its colonization, written texts documented an agreement or compromise of the people. From the Mayflower Compact on, to the colonial charters of the assemblies, from the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution - all of them reflect the value and trust Americans put in the written document since the early days. It also explains why they believed that the vagueness of England’s constitution had produced corruption, and  consequently, they should part and become independent of their mother country.[53]

In contrast to all Anglo-American colonies which had inscribed the shape and power of government permanently on paper in the colonial charters, Britain did not have a written constitution. Besides the ‘Magna Charta’ from 1215 and the ‘Bill of Rights’ from 1689, which both regulate the rights of the monarch and the parliament, Britain was governed by ‘unwritten conventions’ and the British people accepted that there could be change in them.[54] This fact was highly criticised  in the American colonies. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet ‘Common Sense’ was one of the most famous critics about the corruption the lack of a written constitution in Britain had produced and it had a tremendous success and impact in growing further tensions between the British and Anglo-Americans.[55]

In the following years written documents played a significant role in forming patriotic resistance as well as establishing a national character of the young nation. The ‘Declaration of Independence’ which has been later enshrined an adored like a myth, the ‘Articles of Confederation’ and the ‘Constitution’ itself mirror the significance written papers played in the American culture. The press made it also possible that the ‘federalists’, who favoured  the ratification of the constitution, most importantly John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, could publish many articles all over the country explaining and defending the virtues and meaning of the constitution and in the end convincing and uniting the people against the ‘Antifederalists’.[56]

According to de Tocqueville, the contrast between England and America lies in the fact that England rejected the axiom of uniformity and consistency,  the era of typographic civilization had induced. On that point McLuhan states about de Tocqueville:

De Tocqueville, in earlier work on the French Revolution, had explained how it was the printed word that, achieving cultural saturation in the eighteenth century, had homogenized the French nation. Frenchman were the same kind of people from north to south. The typographic principles of uniformity, continuity, and lineality had overlaid the complexities of ancient feudal and oral society. The Revolution was carried out by the new literati and lawyers…..In England, however, such was the power of the ancient oral tradition of common law, backed by the medieval institution of Parliament, that no uniformity or continuity of the new visual print culture could take complete hold.[57]

At this point we are coming back to the beginning of the argumentation. We saw and understood the impact of the phonetic script had on the human mind and on human society, how the separation of the visual from the other senses forced people to become rational and thus individuals and how this influenced the idea of uniting all the individuals again equally in a democracy. Considering now one major turning point of history, the invention of Gutenberg’s typography or as Marshall McLuhan calls it ‘The Gutenberg Galaxy’, we can retrace the importance of the enormous increase in distributing the phonetic script.

With typography the need for consistency, unification and linearity grew rapidly. It meant a unification of rules in grammar and accuracy, but at the same time it brought a exceeding social and even universal change, because it forced all the people into the same line of thinking and feeling.

Menschen, die in ihren Rechten, in ihrer Erziehung, ihrem Vermögen, kurz in ihren Lebensbedingungen gleich sind, haben notwendig auch Bedürfnisse, Gewohnheiten und Neigungen, die sich nur wenig voneinander  unterscheiden. Da sie die Gegenstände unter dem gleichen Gesichtswinkel betrachten, zieht sich ihr Geist naturgemäß auf gleiche Gedanken hin, und obwohl ein jeder sich von seinen Zeitgenossen absondern und sich seine eigene Weltanschauung bilden könnte, finden sie sich doch schließlich, ohne es zu wissen und ohne es zu wollen, alle wieder in einer bestimmten Zahl gemeinsamer Anschauungen zusammen.  [58]

American colonization began, at the time, when typography just started to restructure human society and with the physical, political, economical and cultural circumstances, the outcome could not be any other than the equality of the people, hence democracy. The massive increase in educational opportunities, because the costs for production of books was immensely reduced, which meant that more and more people started to read and write, was followed by a formation in equal perspectives and  brought the people into the same line of thinking and feeling.  Already enjoying political freedom, the structure of the new society could only be based on equality.

If all levels of the people are equated and think and feel in the same way, everyone can easily understand the feelings of the other – he just needs to look inside himself. In this respect, in a democracy, the people have a general compassionate feeling towards each other.[59] Thinking that they are not different from their fellow countrymen, the people also tend to think that there should be the same norms and standards for everyone, and they can not understand why there are laws and customs some groups of people, with different cultural background, could not adopt to.[60] 

In a time of equality, people are yearning for a strong central power as well as an uniform and consistent legislation. The highest authorities in a democratic republic, which exists  outside the people, are those in the legal profession and above all the judges.[61]

De Tocqueville could barely see any sign of administrative central power in the U.S. at his time. He explained that there barely existed any administration, because legislation was so extended and strengthened that laws regulated almost all procedures and acts to be taken by the public authorities and thus minimizing them in numbers.[62] Again one can dissect that consistency, unification and linearity – qualities the phonetic script and typography intensified – can be retraced. Those same qualities influenced the American people to change their law of succession – abolish primogeniture and establish succession in equal shares. A law which tremendously changed the American landscape, because it destroyed large-scale landed property and elevated the power of the individual instead of the family -  it destroyed the traditional ties between ‘aristocratic’ families and their property.[63]     

Conclusion

Today Alexis de Tocqueville’s work can not be overestimated. Nearly two centuries after he wrote ‘Democracy in America’ we can only approve to his descriptions, observations and his numerous prophecies. Marshall McLuhan points it out:

De Tocquevilles Geschick, die schriftlichen und die oralen Arten menschlicher Empfindungsformen in ein Wechselspiel zu bringen, befähigte ihn, „wissenschaftliche“ Einsichten in die Psychostruktur und die Politik zu erlangen. Durch dieses Wechselspiel der beiden Wahrnehmungsformen gelangte er zu einer geradezu prophetischen Einsicht, während andere Beobachter lediglich ihrem persönlichen Gesichtspunkt Ausdruck gaben.  De Tocqueville war sich wohl bewusst, dass der typographische Alphabetismus nicht nur die kartesianische Anschauungsweise, sondern auch die besonderen Merkmale der amerikanischen Psychostruktur und Politik verursacht hatte. Mittels seiner Methode, verschiedene Empfindungsformen in ein Wechselspiel zu bringen, war de Tocqueville imstande, auf seine Welt als Ganzes und als ein offenes Feld – und nicht bloß auf Ausschnitte – zu reagieren.  [64]

De Tocqueville was able to fully understand the fundamental changes that had taken place in society, and how they would influence the future. In that way, he anticipated all future theories written on the American Character – if Louis Hartz, Perry Miller, Sacvan Bercovitch or Frederick Jackson Turner – we found all of their basic ideas forecasted in his work. We can detect all of his prophecies about the dangers of equality in democracy, the totalitarian regimes (communism, fascism) and their tyranny, and even the Holocaust in his work.[65]

So, what is the future of American democracy ?

Again Marshall McLuhan:

Alles was Amerika mit dem Alphabetentum geschaffen hat, das als Technik oder Uniformierung auf allen Stufen der Bildung, Erziehung, der Regierung, der Industrie und des gesellschaftlichen Lebens Anwendung findet, ist überall von der Technik der Elektrizität bedroht. ... Die Technik der Elektrizität ist aber mitten unter uns, und wir sind benommen, taub, blind und stumm bei ihren Zusammenprall mit der Technik Gutenbergs, durch die der amerikanische Lebensstil geprägt wurde. [66]

All new forms of technology, which have been invented in the last hundred years - cinema, radio, TV, computer, internet and so forth –  address all senses, but most importantly, are forms of media which re-establish oral forms of communication and thus enhance the auditory sense.[67]  With these new forms of technology - all reflecting an enormous extension of our senses - a process of a magnitude yet unknown has started, in which the relation and connection of man to the world and himself will change forever. However, man has no choice but to submit himself to these changes. As McLuhan points out, man is obsessed by these extensions of his senses, and at the same time, he does not even recognize them as reflections of his mind. He states that man is naïve in thinking, he could eventually decide on the content messages would transmit by his new forms of media. What man does not understand is that ‘the media (itself) is the message’.

He imagines that it is the response of our opinions that is relevant to the effect of media and technology in society, a point of view” that is plainly the result of the typographic spell. For the man in a literate and homogenized society ceases to be sensitive to the diverse and discontinuous life of forms. He acquires the illusion of the third dimension and the “private point of view” as part of his Narcissus fixation, and is quite shut off from Blake’s awareness or that of the Psalmist, that we become what we behold. [68]

All these new forms of media independently establish closed systems, which means that man reacts to them. He more and more ceases to be the active part in the relationship towards his own projections. However, they connect mankind to become one mind. Hence, man experiences the necessity for an all-embracing interrelation again. He becomes part of the ‘Global Village’.

According to the author, all these new media re-establish oral forms of communication, by  which man and especially western civilized man experiences old cultural forms of the tribal community. In the Global Village, man experiences his mutual dependence, which stands in strong contrast to western individualism. Our society, based on the literacy of the phonetic alphabet and typography, will be deconstructed, because perception will change from logic-rational to sensual-affective motives. “Rational, of course, has for the West long meant ‘uniform and continuous and sequential’. In other words we have confused reason with a single technology. Thus in the electric age man seems to the conventional West to become  irrational.”[69]

After all, Marshall McLuhan can be considered as another ‘prophet’. For example: “Mit der Technik der Elektrizität wird die ganze Aufgabe des Menschen im Wissen und Lernen bestehen. Auf das angewandt, was wir noch als ‚Ökonomie’ betrachten, bedeutet das, dass jede Form von Arbeit zu ‚bezahltem Lernen’ wird und alle Formen von Reichtum das Ergebnis von Informationsbewegung sind.“ [70]  Writing these lines more than forty years ago, he anticipated changes in society which just started to take place now. However, his line of argumentation seems to be provocative and exaggerated in saying that the only two main aspects of western civilisation and its progress lies in the use of the phonetic alphabet and typography. I think that psychological, philosophical and geographical aspects should be considered as well in explaining the history of the last 3000 years. But when I entirely follow McLuhan’s argumentation, I have to admit, that these psychological and philosophical aspects are determined by the way we communicate to the world with our senses. And in that way McLuhan can only be seen as a revolutionary theorist, because he pointed out that all forms of media changes our perception and thus our mind, and we are ignorant to these changes – we actually think that we decide what these forms of media will ‘change’. 

However, those new forms of media give us a lot of opportunities to deal with different forms of communication. Citing Alessandro Portelli:

We are able to both read and write (and to transmit and receive) and to speak and hear; we can select, for each situation and function, the more appropriate medium; we can experiment with different modes and technologies of the word, specialize them, mirror them, weave them together and mix them in ever-changing syntheses and dialogues. [71]

Hence, new media can be seen as a chance for building new forms of society and should not only be seen as threat. In the long run, it will fundamentally change our society and mankind and there might be even a better form of democracy established some day. And I agree with McLuhan that our individualistic perspective will suffer a severe blow, once the Global Village is fully established. Perhaps, this might also be a chance for western man to understand that his rationality actually hinders him to see the full spectrum of life.

The return to oral forms of communication also might imply that the western civilized man will discover the sacred or spiritual, divine in the oral word again. Again Portelli says: “The passage from orality to writing also implies a loss of the presence of the sacred, which may be recovered in the aural environment of contemporary media.” [72] 

I found it very fruitful to link both, McLuhan and de Tocqueville theories together. Both are keen observers of society and its changes. Both foresaw many of those changes which would take place, because they understood the history of mankind in all aspects. ‘Understanding Media helps to understand Democracy in America’.

 

 

Bibliography

Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. Fourth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Company, 2004

F.A. Brockhaus. Der Großbritanien – Brockhaus:  Großbritanien von A-Z.  Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1983

McLuhan, Marshall. Die Magischen Kanäle „Understanding Media“. Düsseldorf: Econ Verlag, 1992

McLuhan, Marshall. Die Gutenberg-Galaxis: das Ende des Buchzeitalters. Bonn: Addison-Wesley Verlag, 1995

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media - the extensions of man. ARK Edition. London: MIT Press, 1987

Portelli, Alessandro. The Voice and The Text: Writing, Speaking, and Democracy in American Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994

de Tocqueville, Alexis Clerel. Die Demokratie in Amerika. Regensburg: Verlag Josef Habbel Regensburg, 1955

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/bookmarks/zenger/

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demokratie