Appendix Part 1: On Alienation 1- Thoth to Plato

In this essay, we shall throw some light upon the story of the Pharaoh Thamus and Thoth. [The story appears in Plato's “Phaedrus.”]¹

“The story is that in the region of Naucratis in Egypt there dwelt one of the old gods of the country, the god to whom the bird Iblis is sacred, his own name being Theuth.² He it was that invented number and calculation, geometry and astronomy not to speak of droughts and dice, and above all writing. Now the King of the whole country at that time was Thamus, who dwelt in the great city of Upper Egypt which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, while Thamus they called Ammon. To him came Theuth, and revealed his arts, saying that they ought to be passed on to the Egyptians in general. Thamus asked what was the use of them all, and when Theuth explained, he condemned what he thought the bad points and praised what he thought the good. On each art, we are told, Thamus had plenty of views both for and against; it would take too long to give them in detail. But when it came to writing Theuth said, 'Here O King is a branch of learning that will make the people of Egypt wiser and improve their memories; my discovery provides a recipe for memory and wisdom.' But the King answered and said, 'O Man full of arts to one it is given to create the things of art, and another to judge what measure of harm and of profit they have for those that employ them. And so it is that you, by reason of your tender regard for writing that is your offspring, have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”

All of this sounds very strange to a modern audience; an age that crusades for universal literacy. What is it that will be lost by teaching people to read and write ? Was Thamus wrong? Should this criticism of literacy be dismissed as the ravings of a reactionary? A fact that should give us pause in dismissing Thamus is what what happens when primal cultures encounter modern literate cultures.

What happens to a primal culture when it encounters a technological and literate culture? This is of course assuming the advanced culture does not want to destroy the primal culture So what is it that happens to a primal culture that is forced to interact with a benign advanced culture? What does happen is disaster for the primal culture. Their suicide rate grows, their birth rate falls, and substance abuse is common. This should show us that we must look deeper into what is lost when literacy is gained. To do this we must observe how primal cultures interact with their world. A useful place to start our search is Houston Smith's book “The World's Religions.” In the book “The World's Religions” Smith devotes a chapter to the primal religions. Of course, the word “religion” is not an accurate term for the beliefs of a primal culture. Primal cultures do not distinguish between culture and religion. Culture, religion, and the way they interact with their word are all a unified whole.

Let us turn to some of the aspects of primal religion that Smith explains. It must be remembered that these aspects are all an undifferentiated synthetic feeling that primal people have towards the world they live in. It should come as no surprise that orality is one of the aspects of primal culture. Children are taught the practices and beliefs of their culture in stories that are spoken. When a story is told by speaking it is often acted out. The storyteller alters their voice, takes different postures; animals are mimicked, etc. The stories are also told to groups of children. The children learn together, thus forging a bond with each other. This is a very different learning experience than a group of children reading the same lesson in a quiet room together in that everyone interacts with everyone. To move to another aspect that Smith explains, place is emphasized over space. The stories happen in the geography of where the tribe lives. There is no such thing as abstract space as in modern novels; no fictional towns nor parallel universes. Smith illustrates the concept of place over space in an example. Oren Lyons was a Native American and the first of his tribe to go off to college. When he returned to his village for a vacation some of his relatives took him for a fishing trip. When they had rowed out to the middle of the lake, his uncle asked him, “who are you?” Lyons tried several different definitions, all of which were rejected by his uncle. He finally gave up. His uncle then informed Lyons that he was the bluff, the giant pine growing on the bluff, the water in the lake and so on. The primal culture is part of the landscape as the plants, animals, and geographic features. From space we move to time for the next aspect. Time for a primal culture is not linear, but cyclical. Time is the seasons of the year. Every mythology has a story of annual renewal. Again time, like place, is concrete. We now move to the aspect of totemism. There is no sharp distinction between humans and animals. There are human-birds and bird-humans. This can be seen clearly in the gods of Ancient Egypt. Many of the gods have animal heads or other animal parts combined with human bodies. Primal cultures live in partnership with animals. All mythologies also have stories where animals give advice to humans. Primal peoples learn from the animals that surround them. Again we observe there are no sharp distinctions in primal cultures.

One of the most important gods in Ancient Egypt was Maat. Maat was the goddess of cosmic harmony. In Egyptian art the pharaoh is often depicted as presenting a statue of Maat to his patron god. Primal cultures also live in partnership with their gods. For a primal culture there is no transcendent realm. The gods and goddesses are present in the animals, places, and humans that compose their domain. Primal cultures live in the concrete. This is what is lost or forgotten with writing.

With writing humans can encode the triggers for ideas and emotions into written symbols that are bound in books and scrolls. The ideas and emotions are taken out of any concrete time and place. What writing has done is created a transcendent realm where ideas and emotions can subsist without being attached to any time or place. A realm that can only be entered by those that know how to understand the code of written language.

It is curious that the story of Thoth's invention of writing is found in a dialogue of Plato. It is Plato that give this realm that is not attached to time or place a metaphysical basis. Plato makes this timeless, spaceless realm more of a reality than the concrete world we live in.

Plato was a revolutionary, but a revolutionary that knew and paid tribute to the world- feeling he was going to destroy.

Selected Bibliography

Plato: “The Collected Dialogues” Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton University Press 1989)

Houston Smith: “The World's Religions” (Harper-Collins 1991)

1“Phaedrus” translated by R. Hackforth

2Thoth