## Metadata - Author: [[Leonard Shlain]] - Full Title: The Alphabet Versus the Goddess - Category: #books ## Highlights - Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was one of the very few scholars to challenge literacy’s worth. There is one fact that can be established: the only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing … is the establishment of hierarchical societies, consisting of masters and slaves, and where one part of the population is made to work for the other part. ([Location 223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=223)) - To perceive things such as trees and buildings through images delivered to the eye, the brain uses wholeness, simultaneity, and synthesis. To ferret out the meaning of alphabetic writing, the brain relies instead on sequence, analysis, and abstraction. ([Location 262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=262)) - The primate that walked became the hominid that killed—the first higher animal capable of murder-from-a-distance. By freeing the hands, bipedalism enabled hominids to compress the journey from hunted vegetarian to scared scavenger to tentative hunter to accomplished killer in a mere million years. ([Location 337](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=337)) - Among other social predators such as wolves, lions, and killer whales, the females actively participate in both hunting and killing. Humans became the first group of social predators in which females left this critical task to the males. ([Location 442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=442)) - All vertebrates, beginning with fish, have a bilobed brain. And each of these anatomically mirror-image hemispheric lobes perform the same type of tasks. The human brain lobes, while appearing symmetrical, are functionally different. This specialization is called hemispheric lateralization. There is evidence of this feature in some other vertebrates, but its manifestations in behavior (speech and handedness) are far more striking in humans than in any other species. ([Location 485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=485)) - Of the twin human hemispheres, the right side is the elder sibling. In utero, the right lobe of a human fetus’s brain is well on its way to maturation before the left side begins to develop. The old, wise, right side, more familiar with the needs and drives stemming from earlier stages of evolution, can be better relied upon to negotiate with them than the younger left side. The right hemisphere integrates feelings, recognizes images, and appreciates music. It contributes a field-awareness to consciousness, synthesizing multiple converging determinants so that the mind can grasp the senses’ input all-at-once ([Location 502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=502)) - The right side is concerned with being, the left with doing The left lobe controls the vital act of willing. Its agent, the right hand, picks berries, throws spears, and fashions tools. The left lobe knows the world through its unique form of symbolization—speech. In right-handed people, 90 percent of language skills reside in the left hemisphere. Speech gave the left brain the edge to usurp the sovereignty of the mind from its elder twin. ([Location 563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=563)) - Speech and action are closely related. Words are tools: the very essence of action. We use them to abstract, discriminate, analyze, and dissect the world into pieces, objects, and categories. But speech is not only outer-directed; within the self, words are the implements of thought. ([Location 566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=566)) - To be able to leap from the particular and concrete to the general and abstract has allowed us to create art, logic, science, and philosophy. But this skill tore us out of the rich matrix of nature. The part torn away became the ego. The left brain cleaved the right brain’s integrated sense of wholeness into a duality that resulted in humans creating a distinction between me-in-here and world-out-there. The ego requires duality to gain perspective. Dualism also enhanced the human penchant for objective thinking, which in turn increased our reasoning skills and eventually led to logic. ([Location 574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=574)) - All the innovative features of the left hemisphere—doing, speech, abstraction, and numbers—are linear. To develop craft, logic, strategy, and arithmetic, the mind must range back and forth along the line of past, present, and future. The survival and then success of humans required that evolution set aside an area in the newly enlarging brain in which the concept of time could be contemplated free of the holistic and gestalt spatial perceptions of the earlier mammalian and primate brains. An appreciation of linear time was the crucial precondition for linear speech. A conversation can be understood only when one person speaks at a time. In contrast, one’s right brain can listen to the sounds of a seventy-piece orchestra and hear them holistically. Time and sequence are the very crux of the language of numbers; it is impossible to think of arithmetic outside its framework. I propose that the left hemisphere is actually a new sense organ designed by evolution to perceive time. ([Location 586](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=586)) - Researchers have discovered that women have between 10 percent and 33 percent more neuronal fibers in the forward part of their corpus callosum than do men. 4 The higher the number of connecting neurons, the greater must be the integration between the two sides. Women and most men freely concede that women are more aware of and can better express their feelings than men. The extra connecting neurons seem to enhance the communication of emotions and increase global awareness, field perception, and understanding of the moods of offspring. Generally, women can perform multiple tasks simultaneously better than men. ([Location 594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=594)) - The dichotomy between the left and right hemispheres mirrors the differences between hunter/killer and gatherer/nurturer strategies. Metaphorically, time is the masculine coordinate, and space is the feminine one. The poet William Blake wrote, “Time & Space are Real Beings, a Male & a Female. Time is a Man and Space is a Woman. 5 ([Location 609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=609)) - The eye divides every scene into two major elements: figure and ground. Figure is visualized sharply and in detail; ground provides the context within which the figure resides. The cones best see figure; the rods best visualize ground. ([Location 627](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=627)) - Rods have an older ancestry than cones; all vertebrate eyes have them. But only a few animals possess cones in abundance. The evolutionary history of the rods and cones is telescoped in infants. Babies can see with rod vision within days of birth. Cone vision (color and detail) does not fully develop until many months later. As a legacy of our primate heritage, humans have one of the highest ratios of cones to rods among mammals. And because of the left brain’s expanded sense of linear time, humans greatly refined this propitious gift. The need for cones is particularly acute in predatory birds, predatory mammals, and the only truly predatory primate, the human. Herbivores rarely need them: plants cannot run away. But predators must be able to observe not only where their potential dinner is, but also where it might be going. Cones allow an animal to scrutinize ([Location 634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=634)) - The cones isolate sections of the visual field, then inspect each one in sequence. This focusing ability of the fovea centralis creates the illusion of time passing because the images seen within” this narrow circle of the eye can only be processed one-at-a-time Because macular vision examined what was and then moved on to what is, it forced the emerging human brain to consider the possibility of what might come next. Cone vision, I suggest, created the necessary parameters for the left brain to invent the all-important idea of next, which led, inexorably, to foresight (or next-sight)—a sense of the future. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=645)) - The specialization of visual functions within each human eye corresponded to the lateralization of the cerebral hemispheres and the bifurcation of the human sexes. The holistic vision of the rods assisted the right brain in gathering and nurturing. Tunnel vision was primarily subordinated to the unique demands of the hunting left brain. Women have more rods in their retinas than men, and as a result, have better peripheral vision. They can see better in the dark and take in more at a glance than men. Men have more cones than women, allowing them to see one segment of the visual field in greater detail and with better depth perception than women. ([Location 655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=655)) - Not only brains and eyes, but human hands, too, specialized. The left hand, controlled by the right brain, is more protective than the right. The left hand is the one that commonly holds a baby regardless of the hand preference for other tasks, and the left arm wards off blows. 7 Its movements are grosser, that is, less coordinated than the right’s. Hunters and warriors carry their shields with their left hand. Hand preference became more prominent when hominids advanced from foraging to gathering. Whereas the forager consumes on the spot whatever can be easily picked, the gathering hominid postponed eating in order to carry what had been collected back to a home base. The right hand selected what the left hand carried. ([Location 660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=660)) - Many cultures use the left hand exclusively to aid in elimination of feces and urine and consider it unclean, reserving the right hand for eating. * The evidence that these prejudices still persist resides in our language. To be left out, to be served left-overs, to receive a left-handed compliment, or to be left in the lurch reflects the negative connotation associated with this side, and by extension, the right hemisphere. The word for left in Italian is sinistra. The word sinisterin English comes from the same root. In French, left is gauche which also means clumsy. Droit, the right, means correct. ([Location 666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=666)) - The right hand actively wields the hammer; the left hand passively steadies the nail. ([Location 673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=673)) - Each man has a gatherer/nurturer aspect to his personality, psyche, and mind, just as each woman has hunter/killer aspects to hers. Every individual has encased in his or her skull both a feminine brain and a masculine one. Any particular society can accentuate one or the other of these two ways of interacting with the world, depending on the demands of the environment or the shaping influences of its inventions. ([Location 683](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=683)) - Fear of death lies behind another trait peculiar to humans—guilt. It begins with having to kill another creature in order to eat. Roberto Calasso, the classicist, wrote, The primordial crime is the action that makes something in existence disappear: the act of eating. Guilt is thus obligatory and inextinguishable. And, given that men cannot survive without eating, guilt is woven into their physiology and forever renews itself. 3 In the Old Testament, guilt enters the world by way of a bite from a fruit. ([Location 732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=732)) - All things that die return to life through the agency of the female: the earth is both womb and tomb. ([Location 745](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=745)) - Among Stone Age peoples, a core hunting group comprised approximately ten adult males in their prime. Modern society still depends on the cooperation of approximately ten adults, male or female, to accomplish major undertakings. There are ten soldiers in a squad, eleven players on a football team, nine on a baseball team, twelve members on a jury, ten to twelve on a board of directors, and nine Supreme Court justices. Ten vigorous adults usually assure inspiration, leadership, cooperation, and purpose. ([Location 763](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=763)) - Accordingly, there would have been about the same number of women in their childbearing years, caring for an additional thirty to forty children. Adding adolescents and the elderly, the most economical and efficient size of a human hunter/gatherer group was approximately eighty to one hundred individuals. ([Location 767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=767)) - I propose that the central factor in the fall of the Goddess was a revolutionary development which occurred during the same period—literacy. First writing, and then its more sophisticated refinement, the alphabet, tolled the death knell of feminine values both metaphorically and, as we shall see, quite literally. Alphabets are the reason that Western culture’s perception of reality radically shifted. This is literacy’s hidden cost. The patriarchal warrior-dominator that plays so prominent a role in all Western history books succeeded because of the invention of books themselves * ([Location 899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=899)) - When written words began to supersede spoken words, the left brain’s dominance markedly increased. To write and read, an individual uses primarily the left hemisphere, only the hunting cones and only the killing hand. With the strokes of a thousand chisels, styli, brushes, and pens, literacy diminished the right brain’s complementary role in creating and deciphering language, dismissing with it the importance of both the rods of the retina and the left hand. ([Location 926](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=926)) - The writer’s eye uses only cone vision to follow the trail of ink emerging from the pen tip as it advances across a page. Handwriting, like reading, proceeds in a linear, sequential fashion, and like all cone vision tasks, requires a high level of concentration. ([Location 986](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=986)) - The font of the print on this page contains serifs. They are the horizontal “finishes” at the top and bottom of most letters. Serifs form what amounts to a set of rails, marking out tracks that the cones of the eye can easily follow. They serve to keep the reader’s visual train of thought rolling smoothly over the print. They accentuate the sequential nature of the written word. ([Location 990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=990)) - While women in Mesopotamia progressively lost power, they maintained their high position in ancient Egypt. The historian Max Mueller commented, “No people ancient or modern has given women so high a legal status as did the inhabitants of the Nile Valley. ([Location 1304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1304)) - Egyptian women fared better than their sisters in Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, as Egypt’s literacy rate increased, feminine authority suffered a decline. In every society that learned the written word, the female deity lost ground to the male deity. ([Location 1325](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1325)) - For sophisticated neurolinguistic reasons the early practitioners could not have known, alphabets reinforced only half of the dual strategy that humans had evolved to survive. As we have seen, this strategy had three components: left brain/right brain, cone/rod, and right hand/left hand. Each tripartite half of this duality perceived and reacted to the world in a different way; a unified response emerged only when both complementary halves were used. ([Location 1400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1400)) - The sexual orientation of the alphabet can be unmasked by studying the myths of the peoples who used it. Upon learning the alphabet, both women and men turned away from the worship of idols and animal totems that represented the images of nature, and began paying homage to the abstract logos A God with no face replaces the sacred images that had hitherto transfixed the faithful. The alphabet-people’s god became indisputably male and he would become disconnected from the things of the earth. He was abstract, nowhere, and yet everywhere, at once. ([Location 1425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1425)) - The biblical version of what transpired in the Sinai recounts the rededication of an entire people to their solitary God. Monotheism was a revolutionary idea, and many believe it is the primary legacy of the Hebrews to future generations. The other revolutionary idea emerging in the Sinai shaped the future of all human aspirations: Yahweh proclaimed that there exists a code of morality that stands above human intercourse. The Ten Commandments applied universally to everyone. No king, pharaoh, or potentate was above the law. If human society was to be organized on a principle other than “might makes right,” all would have to submit. The codes of Draco, Solon, and Justinian, the Magna Carta, the United States Constitution, and the Miranda rights can all be traced back to what happened in the Sinai. ([Location 1485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1485)) - It is not mere coincidence that the first book written in an alphabet is the Old Testament. There is none earlier. ([Location 1494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1494)) - The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans had no word in their language for sin; the Israelites introduced both the word and the concept into the stream of Western civilization and by so doing, diverted it. The Babylonians and Egyptians believed that one’s entire destiny was in the hands of the gods. The biblical prophets convinced each Israelite that every decision was theirs to make. The prophets introduced the idea of Free Will and left the agonizing choice between right and wrong to rest, ultimately, on the conscience of the individual. ([Location 1584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1584)) - The First Commandment declares that Yahweh will not tolerate mention of a Goddess. Given that the Hebrews and Moses emerged from Egypt, the most goddess-worshiping culture in the ancient world, the First Commandment represented a sharp rupture with the past. ([Location 1701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1701)) - Each of the first four Commandments reinforces the ability of a people to think abstractly, linearly, and sequentially. Together, they encourage a mindset that enhances the use and facility of alphabet literacy. Learning the aleph-bet in turn strengthens the belief in the absolute rectitude of the first four Commandments. There have been other rules for conduct set down in other cultures. The first four Commandments cannot be found in the top ten of any other ethical list outside the West. ([Location 1760](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1760)) - The Old Testament was a powerful social instrument that realigned culture. Many groups benefited; others suffered. The winners were the common folk, the poor, widows, orphans, slaves, Levite priests, the literate, warriors, lawyers, judges, prophets, farmers, businessmen, sons, fathers, husbands, and bigamists. Also celebrating were alphabet literacy, law, logic, justice, ethics, morality, dualism, democracy, conscience, and individualism. The losers were wives, prophetesses, queens, artists, daughters, female slaves, rape victims, sexually adventuresome persons, and priestesses. Images, beauty, nature, wholeness, tolerance, and intuition also experienced a decisive setback. Judaism was, and always has been, based on the steadfast worship of God through the medium of the written word. The Hebrews founded the first religion based on literacy, and for the first time in history, a people repudiated both the Goddess and the making of images in their art. ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1773)) - The origins of Judaism are important to this book’s thesis because of the exclusionary First Commandment, proclaimed at a time when the Goddess still held a place of high regard in people’s hearts and lives. That a religion was founded on the precept that a masculine deity created life without any female participation signaled that something had changed radically. * ([Location 1816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1816)) - The young future patriarch Joseph, we are told, tattled on his brothers. Jacob’s deceit, Noah’s drunkenness, and David’s perfidy diminish the reader’s respect for each one. If the purpose of a national founding document is to engender reverence, why does the Old Testament include such debunking anecdotes? Perhaps the reason that these flaws have been so faithfully preserved throughout the ages is because they are true. The Old Testament’s often critical portrayal of its protagonists makes it history’s first relatively objective literary work. Objectivity depends on rational analysis. Use of an alphabet increases the left brain’s ability to be objective. ([Location 1829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1829)) - (An idol-maker working among competing deities most assuredly would be among history’s first skeptics.) ([Location 1860](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006URPSJK&location=1860))