One of our greatest past achievements may have been created as a tool to do evil that continues to this day.
From Guns, Germs and Steel by Jarod Diamond, p. 235: “The intended restricted uses of early writing provided a positive disincentive for devising less ambiguous writing systems. The kings and priests of ancient Sumer wanted writing to be used by professional scribes to record numbers of sheep owned in taxes not by the masses to write poetry and hatch plots. As the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss put it, ancient writing's main function was 'to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.'”
This plays into the idea that “information is power” because writing is information. Therefore, possession of reading and writing skills meant more knowledge and power. Looking at the current state of corporate and government actions in our information age, we now have a society that is largely based on a constant battle between people trying to get information and those trying to keep it from others, a conflict that certainly continues to have evil effects.
From Guns, Germs and Steel by Jarod Diamond, p. 235: “The intended restricted uses of early writing provided a positive disincentive for devising less ambiguous writing systems. The kings and priests of ancient Sumer wanted writing to be used by professional scribes to record numbers of sheep owned in taxes not by the masses to write poetry and hatch plots. As the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss put it, ancient writing's main function was 'to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.'”
This plays into the idea that “information is power” because writing is information. Therefore, possession of reading and writing skills meant more knowledge and power. Looking at the current state of corporate and government actions in our information age, we now have a society that is largely based on a constant battle between people trying to get information and those trying to keep it from others, a conflict that certainly continues to have evil effects.
No comments:
Post a Comment