But the people who read Ong's 1967 book were tipped off that a big shift in our Western cultural conditioning was underway. So taking a hint from Ong, they should have expected to see certain specific kinds of cultural shifts occur.
As a thought experiment, we might wonder for a moment about people who did not read Ong's 1967 book, or who did not take his word about a big shift in Western cultural conditioning being underway.
Indeed, certain kinds of cultural shifts were already emerging in the 1960s -- for example, the black civil rights movement led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In addition, the contemporary women's movement was also emerging, or re-emerging, with new vigor. But along with the new vigor came certain brash feminists who advanced strong anti-male views. It sounded as though they would be willing to throw out the baby (men) with the bath water. However, as I noted above, many men decided not to counter their anti-male views publicly.
But Ong was one of the few men who tried to defend the male agonistic spirit, as he styles it in his book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at
In The Presence of the Word (1967, pages 192-286), Ong discusses polemical structures at length. The Greek word "polemos" means war, struggle. So he had been thinking about these matters for years before the strong anti-male rhetoric emerged in the contemporary women's movement.
Because Ong had studied polemical structure (also known as agonistic structures), he did not structure his book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981) as a polemic against brash anti-male views advanced by certain feminists. In other words, he did not happen to advert explicitly to their anti-male views as a way to establish a framework for his own thought and presentation.
Surprise, surprise, Ong's book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981) also was NOT the big breakthrough book for him that Paglia's 1990 book was for her. In my article "Ten Guys on Fox News Commented on Alleged "Wussification' in America in 2013" that was published at OpEdNews.com (dated December 28, 2013), I have discussed Ong's views in this book in detail.
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