In my Great Philosophers class with Dr. Sakal (and more recently in my Senior Seminar), I explored the idea of 'via negativa,' or 'the negative way.' For those unfamiliar, it's a type of theological truth-seeking in which what you don't say is more important than what you do. The great Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides claims that language itself is insufficient to capture God's essence, so a wise person wouldn't even try to speak plainly and risk error.
I wonder if there's a parallel to be made here from "language" to "writing." Certainly, according to Ong and Abram, there's a lot that's lost when information is transmitted through writing rather than speech. Could there be some sort of theology among members of oral cultures in which writing should be forbidden, at least as it relates to important concepts? Abram writes that many of these cultures in the modern age are keenly aware of writing as a technology, and largely choose to stay away from it for various reasons. This suggests that there's a conversation to be had with oral-culture shamans or religious authorities as to whether writing down certain concepts would be desirable, even if the rest of their society used the technology.
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