How do we evolve from the oratory, storytelling traditions?

PLATO SHEDS THE SHADOW OF AN ORATORY TRADITION IN THE LIGHT OF THE PHILOSOPHER KING...

Socrates was a prominent orator who told stories in a time of great fractured culture and changing history. Plato appeared his protege in an Age whose speaking rhetoric was mantling itself to a written tradition and an oratory antithetical to a storytelling tradition. His defense of Socrates preserved where it could the lead element of oratory and narrative, not as story moral but on the very nature of morality itself.

This great new latitude and paradigm spoke to the new reigns of rhetoric and Age. But what is so intriguing is the ultimate play of Plato, the philosopher, to imagine an ideal society (in the Republic, for example) led by Philosopher Kings.

A deeper understanding of all the ancient culture on earth prior to Plato's day might sort of see this as merely an appeal from a culture or civilization that has lost its living oratory tradition with their elders.

Elders in most indigenous societies performed the very important functions of the philosopher kings. Overseeing teaching and learning, living knowledge; peoples uses in the arts and sciences.

Censorship and fear of reckless corrupting minds in indigenous society was perhaps less at lead issue than the very strong emphasis to guide the young and adults through to ceremony and ritual and of course, survival. Not just the proving of skills but a clear showing of their work and worship to particular means and ends.

When storytelling is put down
our elders die in them
and our children do all the wrong things.




URL: http://able2know.org/post/discuss/