My favorite scholar is the later American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955). In his mature writings from the early 1950s onward, he worked out an expansive evolutionary account of our cultural history.
In his pioneering work about the print culture that emerged in Western culture after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s, Ong carefully delineated an account of early modern and modern Western culture.
Now, as a cultural historian, Ong never tries to construct a conceptual model that would enable him to say any specificity what comes next. However, if we were to think of Ong as constructing a conceptual model for thinking about whatever may come next, then we would have to say that Ong typically tries to sound hopeful about the developments that he describes – and whatever may come next. For Ong, not sounding hopeful is not an option.
Similarly, for Ong, not sounding evolutionary is not an option. For Ong, by definition, evolutionary thought is not cyclic thought. For example, the account of creation in seven days in Genesis is not cyclic thought, but linear (and hence evolutionary) thought. Incidentally, in the seven-day account of creation in Genesis, God is portrayed as saying each day that his work of creation was good, including of course his work of creating humankind. We should note here that Judaism does not have a doctrine of original sin; that doctrine is a specifically Christian doctrine – a doctrine that both Ong and the late French Jesuit paleontologist and religious evolutionary thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) essentially disregard. See, for example, Teilhard de Chardin’s posthumously published book The Human Phenomenon, translated by Sarah Appleton-Weber (Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 1999; orig. French ed., 1955). Ong never tired of referring to Teilhard de Chardin. See the indexes in Ong's various books for specific page references to Teilhard de Chardin.
For an accessible account of ancient Jewish thought in the Hebrew Bible, see the American Catholic Thomas Cahill’s 1998 book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (New York: Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday).
Now, Ong eventually worked with the terminology of primary oral culture (and primary orality, including all pre-historic hunter-gatherer nomad cultures and pre-historic and historic agrarian cultures), residually oral cultures (such as ancient and medieval cultures in Western culture and elsewhere), print culture (in early modern and modern Western culture), and secondary oral culture (and secondary orality, including our contemporary culture). For Ong, our contemporary secondary oral culture is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
However, for Ong, our contemporary secondary culture is not the same as primary oral culture. If it were, then Ong would be embracing a cyclic account of cultural history, which he clearly does not want to do.
Nevertheless, secondary orality resonates deep within the human psyche -- in our collective unconscious memory of primary orality and thus with our pre-historic human ancestors, including not only our pre-historic settled farming ancestors, but also our pre-historic hunter-gatherer nomad ancestors. However, even though Ong did not choose to make any specific predictions about future developments, he did sound characteristically hopeful about the future, perhaps most notably in his seminal 1967 book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), the expanded published version of Ong’s 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University.
This brings me to the Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman’s account of our pre-historic hunter-gatherer nomad ancestors in his aptly titled 2020 book Humankind: A Hopeful History, translated from the Dutch by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore (New York, Boston, London: Little, Brown; orig. Dutch ed., 2019).
Because the development of phonetic alphabetic writing systems is the pivotal turning point in Ong’s account of our Western cultural history, we should note that Bregman also mentions the development of writing systems in passing (pages 79, 108, and 111), even though writing is not included in the index in his book (pages 453-461). Ong’s most carefully concise discussion of writing systems can be found in his 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Methuen, esp. pages 83-93).
Now, Bregman also says, “Some theologists [sic] even suspect that the story of the Fall alludes to the shift to organized agriculture, as starkly characterized by Genesis 3: ‘By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread’” (page 103).
Incidentally, in the book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelites are portrayed as desert nomads, as Cahill describes them in the subtitle of his 1998 book, mentioned above. For forty years, we are told, they lived in the desert and gathered manna each day. In effect, they are hunter-gatherer nomads.
To this day, many Christians pray to God to give them their daily bread. In effect, they are keeping alive the spirit of the ancient Israelite hunter-gatherer nomads who lived in the desert and gathered manna each day.
Now, I was most impressed with Bregman’s remarkably astute discussion of play (esp. pages 63, 69, 70 [Copycats play at being copycats], 86, and 144 – pages not listed in the index item on play, where only pages 282-288 and 294-295 are listed). Yes, to be sure, Bregman does even title chapter 14 “Homo ludens” (pages 279-295).
In it, on page 283, the Dutch journalist Bregman pays homage to the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s book titled in English Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950; prepared from the 1944 German edition published in Switzerland). In Huizinga’s 1938 “Foreword” (pages ix-x), he says, “For many years the conviction has grown upon me that civilization arises and unfolds in and as play. Traces of such an opinion are to be found in my writings ever since 1903” (page ix).
Now, in Ong’s 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pages 18, 25, 33, 44-45, 133, and 170), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, he also pays homage to Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens: The Play-Element in Culture.
But also see Ong’s splendid “Preface” (pages 9-14) to the American edition of the German Jesuit Hugo Rahner’s book translated into English as Man at Play, translated by Brian Battershaw and Edward Quinn (New York: Herder and Herder).
Ong’s 1967 “Preface” is reprinted as “Preface to Man at Play (1967)” in the 2002 600-page anthology An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pages 345-348).
Bregman ends his book with “Epilogue: Ten Rules to Live By” (pages 379-397). In spirit, his ten rules reminded me of Timothy Snyder’s short 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books/ Crown Publishing Group).
For a bibliography of Ong’s 400 or so publications (not counting reprintings and translations as separate publications), see Thomas M. Walsh’s “Walter J. Ong, S.J.: A Bibliography 1929-2006” in the 2011 book Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J., edited by Sara van den Berg and Thomas M. Walsh (New York: Hampton Press, pages 185-245).
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Science lays out the groundwork for the idea that people aren't actually all awful. Bregman covers a ton of events and actions to show how humans are basically all decent. A much needed read for 2020.
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