Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose . . . Part 1
Sauf quand ils changent réellement (except when they actually change)
By Micah E. Weiss
Overheard at the dinner party: “Well, you know, Socrates thought writing was bad!”
Let that hang in the air for a little while, as I introduce this series. Over the years, I have been distinctly sensitive to certain arguments some people employ in conversations. Arguments that aren’t really arguments at all, but more like short cuts around an inconvenient topic. The most primitive is what I call the escape clause or, the leave me alone!, e.g.: “It’s all a matter of opinion,” although I don’t hear that one so much anymore. Its cousin, “Everything is relative!” seems to be out of vogue as well, but I still hear it from time to time.
Alongside the leave me alone! lives the conversational dodge that I have the most problems with; it is the one most used by the smartest people as if to say: I’ve thought about that as much as I plan to, thank you very much. Now you might argue that this invokes leave me alone! in a more polite and extensive form, but you’d be wrong! With leave me alone! arguments, there is usually something humble being voiced. It is a face-saving exeunt for someone for whom thinking, at least where that topic is concerned, isn’t important. Arguments in the category I’ve thought about that as much as I plan to, thank you very much say something very different. The person who invokes an argument of this kind still believes that what they think is important despite their desire to stop thinking about it. Implicit is a demand for respect for their half-baked opinion that the relatively modest leave me alone lacks.
The most recent example that I’ve heard repeated by very intelligent and educated folk is, you guessed it, straight from the dinner party: “Well, you know, Socrates thought writing was bad!” Now, I’m not entirely sure if they have read Phaedrus, Plato’s dialogue wherein Socrates comments on written language, but I highly doubt it. Or if they have, it might be in the manner that I, until about a month ago, had–many years ago.
Part of the irritating nature of our internet/social media age (of which I have much to say now and in later posts in this series) is that any idiot can find any quote from anyone and trot it out to gild their argument with a patina of erudition. My issue with this particular invocation is that it is trotted out, not by idiots, but by very educated and intelligent people who wish to make some sort of “Plus ça change” point about technology in a manner consistent with I’ve thought about that as much as I plan to, thank you very much. Most of the people (and publications) that have abused Plato in this way are progressive in their politics, which immediately creates a paradox that I find confusing. If there is progress, then how could “plus c’est la même chose” be true? Let’s advocate for change, progress, but insist that everything stays the same? This can be seen in the sentiment that all generations complain about the next generation, and that there are always moral panics over new technologies, and even the simple phrase “Ok, Boomer!” Either things change, or they stay the same, you can’t have it both ways at your convenience.
But before we return to that, what exactly did Plato say Socrates said? I’m afraid that it’s a rather long series of quotes, as most abused quotes are—some may know that Gandhi never said “Be the change you want to see in the world” and that Marx never called religion the opiate of the masses. Here again, the reality does not match the meme.
You can read a translation of the entire dialogue with some commentary here, and you will find what I noticed right away: Socrates is quoting from an Egyptian god to make his point about writing. It’s amazing. Plato is writing what Socrates heard that the god Thamus said to the god Theuth when he invented writing. So, just for fun, the misquote from that intelligent/educated personage at the dinner party is a misquote from a writer from a speaker from a tale of another speaker. It may seem as if I am making fun of the dinner party guest, but I’m not. I am, in fact, in awe of our times—how we can bind together several thousand years of ideas (in this case somewhat clumsily) in a toss-off comment meant to move the conversation forward, probably because the dinner party guest wants to get back to talking about their awesome data plan after the scold in the room (that’s me!) criticized smartphone technology.
Back to Plato. Or rather, Socrates, or Thamus, or whomever. Let’s go with Thamus. He says:
“‘[Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.’”
We know this objection to be correct. Anthropologists have long marveled at the memories of preliterate peoples when it comes to their stories, their geographies, extensive knowledge of flora and fauna, herbal medicines, etc. It seems that when we started storing knowledge in writing, we lost some of our capacity for memory. Thamus, or Socrates, or Plato, were all correct. Of course Socrates was saying something more complex than that mere observation of fact. He elaborates:
“[W]riting is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.”
Reading this makes me long for Socrates to be at that dinner party. I am reminded of that brilliant scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen’s character pulls Marshall McLuhan himself into the scene to correct a pontificating stranger. And Socrates had a point! There is something dead about the activity I am currently engaged in, something frustratingly static to readers down the ages who, to just pick a random example, overhear some misquote at a dinner party. The words are there but Socrates isn’t there to defend them.
Socrates didn’t think writing was bad; he thought it would denigrate and replace the real organic experience of speech in conveying truths. Immediate, real, almost biological truths. Speech, after all, is innate in us, a part of our DNA, something we are born with the capacity to learn and create. We’ve been speaking to each other for hundreds of thousands of years; we’ve only been writing to each other for a fraction of that time. Oral communication through language does have a sacred power, particularly in person, standing in the Athenian Agora together, hangin’ out, sipping some mulled wine. Socrates feared that writing, by itself, was too removed from that sacred power. Furthermore, Socrates was a talker who never wrote things down. It could be that he was slightly biased. Biased or not, however, the cultures of Western Civilization ignored him and went on writing without paying him any mind.
Or did they? Here the context that was until now hinted-at becomes important. I have heard this invocation of misquoted and somewhat misunderstood Socrates most often in defense of the internet/smartphone/social media technologies. I group the three together into what others have termed the Hyperreality, or the Machine, but increasingly, it’s just our culture.
In future posts in this series I may provide link upon link of study after study, statistic after statistic of why this is a sinister problem. But for the purposes of this introductory piece, I merely want to suggest that the most common bit of denialism, that there’s nothing to worry about, and if you do, you are just a part of a moral panic encapsulated in this example of examples—the maltreatment of Socrates—is a terrible, stupid, lazy, no-good argument, and should be stopped.
That’s because Socrates was right, and the wise in western cultures were paying attention.
The two biggest concerns of his were loss of capacity for memory, and a loss of the almost physical truths that are a part of an organic use of speech between people. How did the wise respond? I have been a teacher for 17 years, and am distinctly aware of the history of education, and where it is now in comparison to other eras. The wise dealt with the problem of memory by requiring rote learning for thousands of years, until recently.
The liberal arts required it. Memorizing poetry, epics, play soliloquies, prayers, laws, other languages—particularly other languages–was a major part of the curriculum. Indeed, it could be argued there was no curriculum without memorization. When the Civil War hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain decided that he would like to attend Bowdoin College, he couldn’t get in because he lacked both Latin and Greek. So, at 19 years old, he locked himself in his room for a year and learned both languages, by rote. Gee, I wonder what he needed the Greek for? No doubt he read Phaedrus, and understood in some deep way why he put himself through that. It is likely that he went on to teach Phaedrus as well, as a professor of Rhetoric at Bowdoin. Enter the second concern of Socrates that the wise addressed.
Rhetoric was a staple subject for over a thousand years in the West, particularly in the last five hundred years in the Anglosphere. Rhetoric is the study of how to speak and write, both, clearly, beautifully, and persuasively.
Do not look for these subjects anymore in your average High School or University. Modern so-called progressive methodologies have all but killed rote learning as somehow regressive. If you ask an educator today about memorization, or rote education, you get horrified looks. Often they wave their hands and mutter something about “what’s the point of regurgitation.” I’ve heard several history teachers over the years claim that dates aren’t important. Both of these sentiments seem to be suggesting that knowing things is a vice.
Mention it to a student, and it’s Armageddon. Twice I’ve tried to force my students to memorize something—the first time, it was ten lines of Shakespeare, the second, it was a single amendment to the Bill of Rights (their choice, except the 2nd; not for ideological reasons, it’s just too easy to memorize). In both cases, my students acted as if the sky was opening and fire and brimstone were falling (a reference none of them would get, because they hadn’t read the Bible).
As for Rhetoric, well, that subject morphed into English, which for many years has been a bastion of discussion-based learning. Unpacking the abstractions of literature in a room of excited teenagers has been a joy for me since I began teaching; really since I was the excited teen. But lately, in the educational establishment there have been several moves away from literature study and debate. To say nothing of reading; long texts are increasingly not taught in schools because they don’t get read. Modern curriculums increasingly move away from literature towards nonfiction reading for the “skills” it builds. Less and less poetry, less and less classic literature. One teacher from a boarding school not my own told me that Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, perhaps the greatest teaching novel ever written in English for young high school students, had been replaced by the head of the English department with Trevor Noah’s memoir. Another development gaining steam that has not yet taken over Educators’ thinking has been the loss of participation as a distinct skill to be graded. The reason given is that it hurts shy students’ grades and feelings, essentially giving an out to people who are too cowardly to talk instead of teaching them how to be courageous.
Many of these modern innovations to education are made by people who do not respect Chesterton’s Fence. As he wrote:
“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”
Had the innovators read and understood Socrates, we might not be here.
There is a lot of politics involved in these developments, of course. There is a lot here about parenting, and mandatory universal schooling through high school, and the field of education. But to me, the primary culprit is the Machine itself. Our young people, for certain, but also many of our teachers, are eyeball deep in the short blasts of hyper-novel information delivered by the Machine, rather than long form absorbing activities like reading and conversing with fellow readers. I will likely get into all these topics in this series.
However, for now, the people who mistakenly invoke Socrates in the manner I’ve described need to stop. They need to wake up and smell the befoulment that has become our education system, and see what our children are, and, more importantly, are not capable of. The kids are not alright, in many ways. We need to remember that just because there is a moral panic, doesn’t mean nothing’s wrong, and that during a moral panic, it’s okay to not panic, but only if we listen to the wise.