above civilization artistically but without the phonetic alphabet 
they remain tribal, as do the Chinese and the Japanese. It is 
necessary to stress that my concern is with the process of 
separation of sense by which the detribalizing of men is 
achieved. Whether such personal abstraction and social 
detribalization be a “good thing” is not for any individual to 
determine. But a recognition of the process may disembarrass 
the matter of the miasmal moral fogs that now invest it.

The alphabet is an aggressive and militant absorber and 
transformer of cultures, as Harold Innis was the first to show.

*     Another observation of Diringer’s that deserves comment is 
the acceptability among all peoples of a technology that uses 
letters to “represent single sounds rather than ideas or 
syllables.” Another way of putting this is to say that any