(D) The analogous Ascension of communication media occurs whenever old forms of communication media go out of existence, as the sound-based telegraph of the 19th century has.
(E) The analogous Second Coming involves our contemporary communication media that accentuate sight in new ways as our electronic computer systems do.
CONCLUSION
If we were to understand the story in the book of Genesis of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as an idealized vision of a primary oral culture, then according to Ong's way of thinking, we would have to say that the oral paradise envisioned in Genesis has been lost forever and will not be regained.
Now, what about the non-Western world today?
Hopefully, non-Western cultures today can be syncretistic in spirit and pick and choose carefully certain items from Western culture such as the modern science, the modern capitalism, and the modern representative democracy that emerged in print culture after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the 1450s.
But what about Western culture today vis--vis non-Western cultures?
Economic globalization appears to be here to stay. As a result, people in Western culture are going to be doing business with people in non-Western cultures.
In addition, a kind of syncretistic spirit appears to be arising, at least in the United States, regarding certain kinds of non-Western practices and attitudes. See, for example, Philip Jenkins' book DREAM CATCHERS: HOW MAINSTREAM AMERICA DISCOVERED NATIVE SPIRITUALITY (2004).
Because Plato famously wrote in the genre known as dialogues, I should mention Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's clever hybrid book PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX: WHY PHILOSOPHY WON'T GO AWAY (2014). It is a hybrid blend of scholarly investigation enlivened periodically with dialogues between her imagined character named Plato and another imagined character. The author also includes imagined exchanges of letters. Her book is a tour de force in the hybrid spirit.
However, instead of using letter exchanges, the historical Plato incorporates a number of brief stories in his dialogues such as the story of Er, mentioned above, that hearken back to the world-as-event sense of life in oral cultures. See John Alexander Stewart's compilation and translation of these in the book THE MYTHS OF PLATO (1905).
Plato and Aristotle stood at the interface between the world-as-event sense of life as exemplified in the Homeric epics and the emerging world-as-view sense of life that they themselves exemplified.
But we in Western culture today stand at the interface of the world-as-view sense of life spread through our cultural conditioning in print culture and a new mix that is still emerging in our consciousness.
Finally, because Ong was a Roman Catholic priest, we should note that recent Roman Catholic popes and certain neoconservative Roman Catholic Americans have not exactly set the world on fire in working out new creative ways in which contemporary consciousness can emerge.
See Matthew Fox's book THE POPE'S WAR: WHY RATZINGER'S SECRET CRUSADE HAS IMPERILED THE CHURCH AND HOW IT CAN BE SAVED (2011) and Damon Linker's book THE THEOCONS: SECULAR AMERICA UNDER SIEGE (2006).
In conclusion, I expect that we in Western culture are going to see more manifestations of the syncretistic spirit in the near future. My favorite work in the syncretistic spirit is the posthumously published meditations by Anthony de Mello, S.J. (1931-1987) titled THE WAY TO LOVE: MEDITATIONS FOR LIFE (reissued 2012).
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