Language as a Prison
The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish colonists arrived, contrary to what many of those colonists subsequently claimed. However, it was a language that some theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a European-style written language in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were largely self-sufficient.
One theory regarding language is that it is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control. In this theory written language was needed once top-down administration of small towns and villages came into being. Once there were bosses there arose a need for written language. The rise of the great metropolises of Ur and Babylon made a common written language an absolute necessity—but it was only a tool for the administrators. Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names— who had rented which plot of land, how many crops did they sell, how many fish did they catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? More important, how much then do they owe me? In this account of the rise of written language, naming and accounting seem to be language's primary "civilizing" function. Language and number are also handy for keeping track of the movement of heavenly bodies, crop yields, and flood cycles. Naturally, a version of local oral languages was eventually translated into symbols as well, and nonadministrative words, the words of epic oral poets, sort of went along for the ride, according to this version.
What's amazing to me is that if we accept this idea, then what may have begun as an instrument of social and economic control has now been internalized by us as a mark of being civilized. As if being controlled were, by inference, seen as a good thing, and to proudly wear the badge of this agent of control—to be able to read and write—makes us better, superior, more advanced. We have turned an object of our own oppression into something we now think of as virtuous. Perfect! We accept written language as something so essential to how we live and get along in the world that we feel and recognize its presence as an exclusively positive thing, a sign of enlightenment. We've come to love the chains that bind us, that control us, for we believe that they are us (161-2).
Stichwörter: prison language accounting philosophy-of-language history-of-language
Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they of
iron or of gold.
Prisons are built to break men, and when men are broken society has consummated its revenge
Jan ValtinStichwörter: prison human-spirit
He reads every book in his home but it is not enough. The country boy craves stories. He devours every poem and fable in his school and library. Still he hungers. For stories.
Jennifer LanthierStichwörter: writing prison freedom-of-speech journalism china stamps
After a week he was moved to a different wing and into a shared six-by-eight with a grizzled old con called Alf. He had faded tattoos that stained most of the visible skin on his hands, arms and neck a dull blue, sharp eyes and a thick beard that made his mouth look like an axe wound on a bear.
R.D. RonaldStichwörter: prison prisoner descriptive-prose
Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion
Dan SimmonsThe world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison. [...] Naturally a well-run prison must have a prison industry. I'm sure you see why."
"Well... it helps to keep the inmates busy, I suppose. Takes their minds off the boredom and futility of their lives."
"Yes. Can you name yours?"
"Our prison industry? Not offhand. I suppose it's obvious."
"Quite obvious, I would say."
I gave it some thought. "Consuming the world."
Ishmael nodded. "Got it on the first try.
Stichwörter: prison life-lessons culture world-changer plain-truth
There is a difference between the inmates of your criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison had nothing to do with justice.
Daniel QuinnStichwörter: prison culture evolutionary-process cultural-prison
Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.
Mumia Abu-JamalStichwörter: prison oppression cages
You’re scaring the dog,” Trish pointed out. She rarely called me by name. They do that in
prisoner of war camps, I’ve heard. Depersonalization.
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