a little more McLuhan (& maybe Pynchon)

[alice wellintown]

McLuhan is simply wrong about this; he doesn't know what he's talking
about. The phonetic alphabet never narrowed or monopolized human
sentience or the human senses. This bit of nonsense is akin to other
nonsense we read about language, sometimes posted to the P-List, like
the stuff about how particular languages influence how people think
about or percieve, and thus name, what they think and see, like color
or snow.  The alphabets and the grammar "rules" of language do not
restrict or restrain or limit what humans can sense or what they can
express; the words humans use to think about a concept or a physical
thing, are arbitrary and the combination of words, the syntax is not
restricted by words or the rules of grammar (not prescriptive
grammar), it is infinite.

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 8:45 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 'Inner life' in McLuhan's vision, although self-awareness, of course, is
> sense perception, all of them, full and rich, embedding feelings, emotions,
> etc...with which most of the world 'thought' before the phonetic alphabet
> narrowed and monopolized our senses.........
>
> Q: Among other ways, do you 'think' in words often when you think? That is,
> do you SEE them sometimes?...I mean even when you are not posting on
> the plist? ..When you are 'thinking' about what you heard, what was said,
> what you might do next?
>