Jackson Langfeld reading memory vs writing

 As the semester comes to a close and finals rear their ugly head memorization becomes important because most classes don't give you a cheat sheet on exams. Ong made a point that oral cultures relied on memory without having written records. I have to memorize monologues for my theatre class, which at times can be challenging. I could not even begin to imagine what it would be like to live in a society where you have to memorize history, law, and rituals through repeated storytelling. Writing is so normalized and with the technologies of today memorization is not required for survival, shit I have known people who used directions everyday to get to a place that they had worked for 3 years. (That is absolutely baffling to me) People rely on written language as an external storage tool instead of committing things to internal memory. It made me wonder if our ability to remember things has been harmed by writing? What would happen if we stopped relying on writing so much and formed a memorized library of knowledge in our minds?

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