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06549_Field_TCUM T114.txt
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1996-04-10
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fission of “backward” and oral cultures that are just coming to
individualism and nationalism. It is the difference between the
“A” bomb and the “H” bomb. The latter is more violent, by far.
Moreover, the products of electric fusion are immensely
complex, while the products of fission are simple. Literacy
creates very much simpler kinds of people than those that
develop in the complex web of ordinary tribal and oral societies.
For the fragmented man creates the homogenized Western
world, while oral societies are made up of people differentiated,
not by their specialist skills or visible marks, but by their unique
emotional mixes. The oral man’s inner world is a tangle of
complex emotions and feelings that the Western practical man
has long ago eroded or suppressed within himself in the
interest of efficiency and practicality.
The immediate prospect for literate, fragmented Western