The Alphabet vs. The Goddess
“Leonard Shlain contrasts the feminine right-brained oral teachings of Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus with the masculine creeds that evolved when their spoken words were committed to writing.
The first book written in an alphabet was the Old Testament [speculation] and its most important passage was the Ten Commandments.
The first two reject of any goddess influence and ban any form of representative art.
Presented at The Distinguished Lecture Series Pepperdine University Malibu, California November, 2006.”
“Shlain died following a two year battle with brain cancer, aged 71, on May 11, 2009.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Shlain
“In this groundbreaking book, Leonard Shlain, author of the bestselling Art & Physics, proposes that the process of learning alphabetic literacy rewired the human brain, with profound consequences for culture.
Making remarkable connections across a wide range of subjects including brain function, anthropology, history, and religion, Shlain argues that literacy reinforced the brain’s linear, abstract, predominantly masculine left hemisphere at the expense of the holistic, iconic feminine right one.
This shift upset the balance between men and women initiating the disappearance of goddesses, the abhorrence of images, and, in literacy’s early stages, the decline of women’s political status.
Patriarchy and misogyny followed.
The love of Mary, Chivalry, and courtly love arose during the illiterate Dark Ages and plummeted after the invention of the printing press in the Renaissance.
The Protestant attack on holy images and Mary followed, as did ferocious religious wars and neurotic witch-hunts.
Shlain goes on to describe the colossal shift he calls the Iconic Revolution, that began in the 19th century.
The invention of photography and the discovery of electromagnetism combined to bring us film, television, computers, and graphic advertising; all of which are based on images.
Shlain foresees that increasing reliance on right brain pattern recognition instead of left brain linear sequence will move culture toward equilibrium between the two hemispheres, between masculine and feminine, between word and image.”
http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/
