The Conscious and Unconscious Aspects of Orality

    Before tonight I don't think I have truly appreciated Ong's insights. I have gotten a little behind in his book so it was my mission tonight to get completely caught up but I think that I may fail. My failure will actually be quite an accomplishment in this context. I will fail because of the following passage. It has intrigued me so much that I have had to put the book down so that I can try to understand what is being said.

  "Talk implements conscious life but it wells up into consciousness out of unconscious depths, though of course with the conscious as well as unconscious co-operation of society." Ong 81

  

  I have been pondering this quote for over an hour in the back of my mind and am still murky on exactly what it means. So I think that the only course of action is to break it down into minuscule pieces.

"Talk implements conscious life"

   This fragment is the most straightforward part of the quote's entirety. The ability to speak is what allows us, as human beings, to be able to express out thoughts. To be able convey meaning to one another. It gives us the ability to accomplish actions as a collective instead of just an individual. That is the basics of this one piece of the puzzle, which by itself is quite understandable and easy to grasp.

"but it well up into consciousness out of the unconscious depth"

    Again, I think that this fraction of the entirety is pretty basic. All thoughts that are part of our conscious, meaning that we realize that we are thinking of them, come from the part of our psyche, soul, or mind that we cannot know. This signifies that speaking is indeed a natural function of human beings. I take this to mean that speaking is similar to breathing. We do not have to think about it to accomplish it. My meaning is not that we would not have to think to have an effective type of oral communication but that it is instinctive to try to communicate orally, whether or not it would work would depend on the conscious thoughts that direct the intricacies of the language used. 

"though of course with the conscious as well as unconscious co-operation of society"

    This goes back to what I was saying above. Without the conscious and unconscious help of society as a whole, oral communication would have no realistic or practical place in our lives. In fact without this collective  cooperation, society as a whole would not function. I think that the unconscious and conscious aspects of society both have very significant roles that need to be explored. 

The conscious aspect signifies to the ever evolving language that we use today. We are consciously choosing to change our language and how we use it. As individuals, we may not choose to do so but as a societal whole it is a conscious choice. We don't respond in a vigorous negative manner when introduced to knew words such as texting or googling something. To prove my point, the spell check which is very persnickety did not yell at the words texting or googling, which it probably would have done so even ten years prior to today. 

    The unconscious aspects that Ong is referring to, I believe is a reference to Jung's collective unconscious. Our collective unconscious has allowed for us to build up to this point in our evolution of our oral mannerisms. We no longer have to work as a society to setup our language at the beginning of each generation. We have become so ingrained as a society that it is not even a question of how a child knows how to formulate words at very young ages. We have been ingrained from the womb to recognize oral cues, specifically those of our primary caretakers. These primary caretakers encourage the unconsciousness of a fetus to recognize their voices and even try to improve their intelligence before there is even consciousness. The example of women who play classical music for their unborn babies comes to mind. 

    The page that I found this quote on continues on to compare the aspects of orality that I have mentioned above with the artificiality of writing or script. To supplement Ong's point of artificiality continue thinking of the classical music example that I have just given. There is no way for the collective unconscious to try and influence the individual unconscious at this point. Thus proving that orality is a much more basic and primary part of the human psyche and that it stems from the unconscious mind just as much or more so than it comes from the individual conscious mind. 


    Also I would love to use the quote above as my one liner but obviously it does not fit into that specific category. However, here are a couple that I think goes along with my theme while still fitting into the requirements that accompany the theme of one-liners


"Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness" Ong 81


"Writing heightens consciousness" Ong 81


"To live and to understand fully, we need not only proximity but also distance" Ong 81