Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.
Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.
This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled –Plato and Alphabetic Thinking from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.
This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world.
Plato & Alphabetic Thinking
Plato expressed his concerns about how alphabetic thinking might affect our view of knowledge in an admonition that would go largely unheeded until the late twentieth century:
It will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, through lack of practice at using their memory, as through reliance on writing they are reminded from outside by alien marks, not from inside, themselves by themselves: you have discovered an elixir not of memory but of reminding. To your students you give an appearance of wisdom, not the reality of it; having heard much, in the absence of teaching, they will appear to know much when for the most part they know nothing, and they will be difficult to get along with, because they have acquired the appearance of wisdom instead of wisdom itself.
Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein
I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:
Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.
Namaste!
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