the phonetic alphabet diminishes the role of the other senses 
of sound and touch and taste in any literate culture. The fact 
that this does not happen in cultures such as the Chinese, 
which use nonphonetic scripts, enables them to retain a rich 
store of inclusive perception in depth of experience that tends 
to become eroded in civilized cultures of the phonetic alphabet. 
For the ideogram is an inclusive gestalt , not an analytic 
dissociation of senses and functions like phonetic writing.

     The achievements of the Western world, it is obvious, are 
testimony to the tremendous values of literacy. But many 
people are also disposed to object that we have purchased our 
structure of specialist technology and values at too high a 
price. Certainly the lineal structuring of rational life by phonetic 
literacy has involved us in an interlocking set of consistencies 
that are striking enough to justify a much more extensive