Integrative Explorations Journal
81
Consciousness Structures and Modern Communication: Oral, Literate, or What? Michael Purdy Governors State University
Abstract Jean Gebser has described five structures of consciousness: archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and the currently emerging integral. Each of these structures correlates with "historical" and current styles of communication operating in human communication relationships. The archaic and magical are alien styles of communication from the perspective of modern communication scholars. The mythic and rational are best known as modes of communication in Eastern (including most of Africa) and Western culture, respectively. Most interesting, perhaps, is the description of communication within the presently emerging integral consciousness structure which some say is literate while others say it is a new orality. Is the emerging integral communication style oral, literate, or what?
Introduction The natural human being is not a writer or a reader, but a speaker and a listener. This must be as true of us today . . . as it was 7,000 years ago. Literacy at any stage of its development is in terms of evolutionary time a mere upstart, and to this day it is in our spoken communication with each other that we reveal and operate our biological inheritance. (Havelock)
This paper was conceived in a consideration of the nature of what Jean Gebser called the emerging integral consciousness. I was presenting at a conference where the theme was the proposition that our present culture is an oral culture. My main concern was the consciousness structure of oral/literate culture and how the consciousness of our present culture fit the bill. My tack was to refer to scholars of culture and consciousness to describe the mythic consciousness, which is the "model" of oral/aural culture and compare that "model" with our present problematic situation which is perhaps oral, but more than oral (though not necessarily aural). The ground for this paper was built upon the premise of the work of Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and Jack Goody, that "the history of mentalites and the evolution of modes of thought are linked to the evolution and types of modes and means of communication" (Ferrarotti 7). That earlier paper lead me to consider the question of the current consciousness as oral, literate, or what? In the process, however, I will give consideration to the communication correlate of each of the modes of consciousness. What is an Oral Culture? Eric Havelock quoted at the beginning of this paper suggests that it is speaking and listening which "reveal and operate our biological inheritance." This may be true, we had a long heritage before literacy. On the other hand we are strongly typed by our cultural history. Since the advent of writing several thousand years ago we have been gradually succumbing to the spell of literacy. If Havelock emphasizes our biological heritage, other scholars lean toward acculturation. Current models set up dichotomies with oral culture over against literate culture. Marshall McLuhan, building on the work of Harold Innis, describes how the printed word eventually brought about privacy, the individuated self, and the nation state. In Understanding Media,
