To be sure, I will suggest a bigger conceptual framework to use based on the classic paradigm of a two-sided debate. My basic claim is that we in contemporary Western culture are undergoing a deep tectonic shift deep in our consciousness as a result of our contemporary cultural conditioning by communications media that accentuate sound. As a result of the deep cultural conditioning, we in Western culture are undergoing a breakdown in classic print culture 1.0 that emerged historically after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the 1450s. Historically, modern capitalism emerged in print culture 1.0 in Western culture.
However, concurrently with that breakdown of print culture 1.0 in Western culture today, we in Western culture are undergoing the breakthrough of the new paradigm of cultural conditioning in print culture 2.0. In short, we are undergoing a paradigm shift from print culture 1.0 to print culture 2.0, due to our deep cultural conditioning by communications media that accentuate sound, which Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), refers to as secondary oral culture -- or oral culture 2.0.
According to Ong, primary oral culture (oral culture 1.0) emerged in pre-historic times. Cultural conditioning in primary oral cultures around the world engendered the world-as-event sense of life.
According to Ong, the world-as-event sense of life emerged long before the historical emergence of distinctively literate thought in ancient Greek philosophy as exemplified by Plato and Aristotle -- and the world-as view sense of life that emerged in ancient Greek philosophic thought.
Ong works with the contrast of the world-as-event sense of life and the world-as-view sense of life in his article "World as View and World as Event" in the journal the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, volume 71, number 4 (August 1969): pages 634-647.
Concerning the visualist bent of ancient Greek philosophic thought, see Andrea Wilson Nightingale's book SPECTACLES OF TRUTH IN CLASSICAL GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THEORIA IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT (2004).
According to Ong, the world-as-view sense of life became far more predominant in Western culture after the emergence of the Gutenberg printing press in the 1450s.
Concerning the historical emergence of print culture 1.0 in Western culture, see Ong's book RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON (2004; 1st ed., 1958).
Modern capitalism, modern science, and modern democracy as exemplified in our American experiment in democratic government emerged in print culture 1.0 in Western culture.
According to Ong, communications media that accentuate sound reached a certain critical mass around 1960. He refers to their new deep cultural conditioning as secondary oral culture -- oral culture 2.0. In general, oral culture 2.0 represents a deep counter-vailing force over against the cultural conditioning inculcated in print culture 1.0, which favored the so-called "rugged individualism" of the so-called "self-made man" in American capitalism.
Anti-60s conservatives are reacting to oral culture 2.0, which is still going strong in contemporary Western culture today, and they cling nostalgically to print culture 1.0, which accentuated the so-called "rugged individualism" of the so-called "self-made man" in American capitalism.
As a result of the deep new culturally conditioning of oral culture 2.0 in contemporary Western culture, print culture 2.0 has already emerged in Western culture, as manifested in photocopiers and printers attached to personal computers -- and the Internet with its wide variety of screens and other devices with screens, all of which screens can be printed out on printers.
ONG ON THE MEANING OF "CATHOLIC"
Ong is most widely known as a cultural historian and theorist. But he was also a religious writer, even though his religious writings did not have a big impact.
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