The Hierarchy is dead. The Word is no longer Sacred, no matter how they try. Fight back, we're almost to the part where Justice does some severe butt kicking......
and some chickens appear. Suddenly. Below the Maxfield Parrish cloud
They went home to roost.
We are at one of those fascinating points in time, where the entire world does change. Sort of like when we hit the ground running and grew a heel. Or the Western re-development of indoor plumbing. Or my father's life in the 1930s, on a Northeastern Pennsylvania farm; the night he came home to see electric lights. The change is that complete and inevitable. The revolution has been televised and uploaded to Utube. Along with blurry videos of the revolutionaries being born. "See! Grandma DID shave!"
The internet has made proprietary knowledge obsolete. The ubiquitous video camera of the 1990-? means our ancestors will be treated to "Celebrity births! With actual birth footage!": you read it here first. And with that, power structures built on secret knowledge disappear. Shame disappears. At least the things we're ashamed of. They'll think up more.
Sneer away and spurn my words. Please. I love words, and they are a dying art. Or at least a luxury. Which is a good thing. Because as Leonard Schlain wrote in “the Alphabet versus the Goddess,” hierarchies depend on limited access to written laws to maintain power. He details how television and computers have turned us from linear thinkers dependent on written documents back to visual creatures, needing only common symbols or pictures to communicate to the universe.
That breaks with all of recorded history. Because 'recorded' history started when they figured out a method of recording and deciphering. Duh.
Read here http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/
Schlain argues that the righthand/leftbrain act of writing encourages linear thinking because the left brain dominates transmitting knowledge. (Except for us Lefties. FU, Sister!) It organizes its knowledge in a linear, hierarchical way. The rules are encoded in a written text -Constitution, Bible, that requires translation for the average person to understand. Sacred text, that only the self selected chosen can interpret. The immutable, unchangeable 'stuff written on paper' the unchallengeable Word.
Great gig. Lasted for centuries.
Then the telegraph, radio and tv knocked the lock off the executive washroom. The Word was still the realm of the magician - occult and full of nuance learned in Ivy covered towers of education and the hallowed halls of the seminary. But it was becoming less authoritative, because physical reaction to stimuli always trump decoding word symbols. A picture is worth a thousand words......
Which is why Powerpoint is so loathsome. 99%of the time, presenters read the powerpoint bullets to the audience. Probably the least effective way to engage positive attention since the Rovian melt down.
The Catholic Church had long had its crozier at the throat of the movie industry. The Hayes Code, which dominated American film into the 1960s was written and overseen by Jesuits. Bing Crosby as a priest? Ever wonder why? Hayes Code - priests good - atheists bad. Setting up generations of altar boys for abuse. Catholic priests weren't the post Vatican 2 guitar playing earnestness. They were more like Vlad the Impaler. Allegiance to the Church was all - leading to deep rooted suspicion of Catholics as not being real Americans.
And John Ford wrote the first memes of American Cultural memory in his pre- WWII films. Irish immigrant in a new land. Roman Catholic in his themes of redemption through bloodshed. Those films gave Americans a shared history that was visceral and emotionally fraught. Not healthy, but ours. Everyone went to the movies. Everyone 'remembers' the emotions of the film. Which leads to 'gut feelings.' Usually a memory skip where you forget why you rejected the idea a hundred times.
Jesus is riding the dinosaur. We are at the moment when we are no longer alone in our skulls. As Spider Robinson said : "we're all getting telepathic together."