The Displacement of “It Is Written”
The Displacement of “It Is Written”
Throughout the history of man, communication from one person to another had been primarily oral. The faithful transmission of tradition was key and human beings could rightly have been called Homo rhetoricus. Language was the medium. Story was the form. When in 1456 the Gutenberg press was invented, a print culture was set in place. Texts and contexts were in focus. Ideas could be distilled, disseminated, argued, spread, and debated. Still, it was language and concept that carried the day.
In 1839, a key advance was made in communication: Photography was discovered. Within four decades, in 1873, transformation in mass communication took a giant step. And when it was discovered that light could be converted to electrical impulses, transmitted over a distance, and then reconverted into light, the age of television dawned.
When one studies the viewing habits of the young and considers the thousands of hours spent unthinkingly in front of a TV screen or iPhone, it is easy to see why the power of abstract reasoning has died since the advent of television and, in the words of Jacques Ellul, we are living with the humiliation of the word. The loss of reading has also reduced the individual’s capacity to write. “Enlightenment” has a whole new meaning now, each person in front of his or her own screen deciding for himself what is truth and what is fancy. No longer does one have to leave his palace to see poverty, disease, old age, and death, and meditate on its meaning under a tree as Buddha did. Death, disease, old age, and suffering are all visible on the televisions in our own living rooms or on handheld devices in our own cars.
One can turn on a television station and “meditate” using the direct-dial numbers that are given. Some advertisers even promise a worry-free life after just a fifteen-minute call. The end result is spirituality without dogma, religion without God, argument without substance, rationalization without rationality, and tranquillity by transfer of funds from the seeker’s bank account to the company that makes the best offer of nirvana, at the same time producing dogmatism about relativism in matters of ultimate meaning.
I mentioned in the introduction that Deepak Chopra, the Western-marketed, Eastern proponent of the New Spirituality, visited Thailand to become a monk for a week. On his website there are pictures of him, clean-shaven, a begging bowl in his hand, sleeping on the floor of a temple. When I mentioned this to an Indian friend, he wondered aloud if Chopra would have done this had there been no photo op to tell the story. Curious, that that was his first response. Perhaps the cynicism that has been bred through the caricatures of reality that are created by the visual is what makes the nighttime stand-up comedians on television so popular.
After reading the article, I went to the leading computer mall in Bangkok, where I happened to be while writing, to buy some accessories for my laptop. I had to wait my turn, because two monks were talking to the salesman, buying their own hardware for who knows what.
First, we had a monk for a week; then, we have computers for saffron-clothed ascetics. I can’t imagine a greater contradiction than monks at a computer store, nor a greater manipulation of spirituality than becoming a monk for a week, with publicity to boot. One may as well be married for a week and think one now knows everything there is to know about marriage. I’m sure the Buddha would have had some thoughts on Chopra’s exploits. And on his fellow ascetics buying computers.
Electronic dissemination became the progenitor of the computer, and now the visual has gone viral with each person having his own network. One police beating or one errant act anywhere in the world can be viewed by millions within minutes. Not too long ago a student in the United States was covertly filmed by a roommate while engaging in a private act, and within minutes thousands were watching it on their cell phones. The young man could not live with the shame of the world watching his private conduct and committed suicide.
While television and movies became the means and the microchip was making its entry, the very substance of our culture was at risk. First to fall was our values. What we treasured and what we revered became expendable and profaned. There was a new way of popularizing rebellion against age-old values. Humor became vulgar. Sensuality was mass-marketed, and that which we thought should be private now became public. How else could a late-night talk show host have humored his way through a public disclosure of his duplicitous life other than by skillfully using the medium to his advantage? The normally immoral became the brilliantly creative. Television triumphed again.