The Non-Evolution of Communication

The Non-Evolution of Communication

    Perhaps one of my favorite thinkers is Stephen J. Gould.  An atheist and proponent of evolution, I still find Gould a great thinker and one whom both theists and nontheists should emulate in their arguments about God.  However, I am not writing about Gould today.  I am rather writing about a discussion I had in African Theologians two days ago.

    While in that class we talked about the importance of writing down history.  In the European Post-Enlightenment Mindset, we live in an age when it seems necessary to look at documentation as the only verifiable form of reality or at least the highest.  My bookshelf, floor, and the basement of my parents' home is a testament to this belief.  In some ways I think the only thing holier than a library is a church (and I have many friends who would probably agree with me save the church part).  In many ways books are the pinnacle of Western Thought.  Our collective history (read: memory) appears to be documented and placed in physical repositories such as the local bookstore, warehouses, or libraries; or it seems to be placed online on sites and portals (i.e. Project Gutenberg or CCEL.org).  Whatever the case, if one were to ask what is the most accurate (ergo truthful, ergo right) form of relaying memories, a Westerner would tell you that it is probably the written word.

    However, throughout the world many stories and memories and histories are still spoken.  We hear of epics being passed down from generation to generation in the form of stories.  In the Western European mindset, this is less accurate (ergo untruthful, ergo wrong).  We have a tendency to boil everything down to saying "its like a game of telephone."  We say one thing to one person on one side of the telephone and get a completely different answer.  From a certain standpoint, this viewpoint couldn't be more right.  Numbers and scientific data charts are hardly things I want to leave to the fragile memory of the "post-enlightenment European Brain," just as I would hate to be in front of a math test without a calculator.  (Okay, I just hate being in front of math tests period.)  Yet, we are confronted with a rather troubling reality if we start going down this road.  We must ask ourselves what we are really saying when we establish value judgments to such things.

    I have told many of my memories to people.  I have said, this and that happened to me once upon a time.  I will tell the facts of the situation that occurred in my life to someone and they will listen.  Yet, I have noticed that the more times I would tell a story the more things I would find that I could add to it.  Perhaps I wouldn't remember what a person was wearing or what the food tasted like, but I could begin to understand why someone did something.  Subconsciously, as we retell a story, we find ourselves psychoanalyzing everything about the event.  I can imagine that the myth stories that people tell one another are much the same.  In some African, or Latin American, or European, or any human culture; the people begin to tell the story and find that they understand a character in just such a way.  They begin coloring in the details of why someone did something and weaving it into the myth.  My question is, does it make it any less real?  If someone espouses a great psychological insight about someone and the reason for why someone does something, does that mean it is less true than just giving the facts.

    I know many will criticize Christians for our belief in Genesis.  There are things in the Bible that just don't make sense and perhaps that backs up the authenticity of the book.  The writers wrote in such a way that people were able argue and debate the meanings and motives of the people in the stories, but they never went so far as to give great detail about how things were done.  They wrote as if it were poetry and not as if it were scientific data.  (There are obvious reasons for doing this, but the irony is that the people most willing to believe that the Bible is scientific fact are atheists: be they scientific atheists or Christian fundamentalists of the furthest pole.)

    In addition to the validity of myth, we should also look at the validity of written word as compared to spoken conversation.  Most of us, in the Western European world would say that the written word is far more verifiable than a conversation.  However, I would like to ask this question: who is more accurate the writer of a book which espouses a different political viewpoint than yours in the most vapid manner or a close friend having a conversation with you?  Chances are you are going to listen to the friend far more readily than you are going to agree with the author of the book, yet your friend has not put his or her thoughts down in written form whereas the author has a publishing contract.  Now one can argue that the friend got his or her information from books, but that is a dangerous argument to make since it shows that information and communication are fluid and can originate from all sorts of media.

    This leaves us with the notion that information and data can be relayed in many ways and no way is inherently better than another.  So, to bring up Mr. Gould finally, human communication works much like his notion of biology works.  In Gould's mind, evolution does not move us closer to some pinnacle, but adapts for diversity.  Our communication is not getting better (i.e. face-to-face conversation, writing, phones, texting, video-conferencing), but rather is just getting more diverse.  Each aspect has a certain benefit and detriment.  The living fluidity of a conversation is counterbalanced by the static definitiveness of the written word.

    Furthermore we have not moved into "the digital age" so much as "digital age" has been added to our repertoire of human communication. We still live in the age of face-to-face communication, just as Gould argues we still live in the age of bacteria and insects.  We just believe that since are the most advanced, we should call it our age.  This is nothing more than intellectual arrogance and should be noted as such.  The same is true with any form of communication.  Lies and truth will exist on the page of a book just as they will issue from the mouths of imperfect humans, the question is about faith and what you believe.