Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and the Bugbear of Information

ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY AND THE BUGBEAR
OF INFORMATION

A. L. HERMAN
Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin
Stevens Point, Wisconsin, U. S. A.

In February, 1944, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy published an essay that called into question one of the most sacred beliefs of modern Western Culture, viz., the belief that literacy, the ability to read and write, makes a society and a people cultured or superior to societies and peoples without that ability. The essay was titled “The Bugbear of Literacy” and in it AKC set out to examine the assumption that literacy is “an unqualified good and an indispensable condition of culture” [“The Bugbear of Literacy” in The Bugbear of Literacy by Ananda K. Coomara­swamy (London: Dennis Dobson, Ltd., 1949), p. 24.]

Coomaraswamy concluded the essay by reminding the reader that his concern was not with literacy in the West but with the spread of modern Western education elsewhere, particularly to India. He said:

My real concern is with the fallacy involved in the attachment of an absolute value to literacy, and the very dangerous consequences that are involved in the setting up of “literacy” as a standard by which to measure the cultures of unlettered peoples.

And then, stating his deepest fears, he concluded the essay:

Your blind faith in literacy not only obscures for us the significance of other skills, so that you care not under what sub-human conditions a man may have to earn his living, if only he can read, no matter what, in his hours of leisure; it is also one of the fundamental grounds of interracial prejudice and becomes a prime factor in the spiritual impoverishment of all the “ward” people whom you propose to civilize. (Ibid., pp. 37-38)

The essay is one of AKC’s finest efforts, written with his usual laconic style, brief (it’s only 15 pages long), copiously footnoted (20 footnotes in four pages), drawing on original sources in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, French, German and English, driven by just the right amount of anger and righteous indignation, and pushing the point home with one quoted source after another; all in all it is, indeed, Coomy at his best.

And yet I think that the thrust of his argument and its conclusion are mis-stated. I don’t believe it was literacy per se that ought to have been AKC’s concern in this essay but something that may or may not presuppose literacy. In the brief paper that follows I want to explain what I think this “something else” is and why I think it ought to be of more concern to us than mere literacy.

Literacy is a tool and like all tools it can be abused. Oral communication is also a tool and it, too, can be abused. There is nothing inherently or necessarily superior to an oral tradition as opposed to a literate tradition, and if either is abused, i.e., if either is used abusively, then each one ought to be criticized and abandoned. The question of superiority of the oral tradition versus the literate tradition does not lie, then, in the manner communication, for both the oral and the written are merely means of relaying information; but the question of superiority does lie in what is communicated. If I spread wild rumours, fear and hatred that cause suffering, agony and death to one segment of humanity, it matters very little whether the spreading is done by word of mouth or by pamphlet and book. Similarly, if I bring happiness, peace and tranquillity into the lives of other human beings, it matters very little whether the bringing is done orally or by printed word. Oral communication is not, therefore, inherently or necessarily superior or inferior to written communication. It was merely an unfortunate accident that oral traditions, which AKC regards as superior, have clashed in the 19th and 20th centuries with literate traditions, which AKC regards as inferior. And it was an accident because the quality of the information which each tradition had to communicate was, in this case, “superior” for the oral tradition and “inferior” for the literate tradition. That is to say, the substance of the communication, the “what” that was communicated, ought to have been the measure of superiority and inferiority and not the manner of that communication.

But what makes some information superior to other information? How can communication be abused by the kind of information that is communicated? The answer to these questions gets us into issues of human goals and ways to goals, of societal and cultural ends and means, subjects close to the philosophic heart of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. What is, as he might have asked, the purpose of a society? What worthwhile goals does it foster for the men and women in that society? What information, finally, is needed to accomplish those goals? Let me turn next to this issue of ends and means and their relation to communication and information.

For AKC as well as for a host of other traditionally-minded philosophers and theologians the primary purpose of society and its institutions is to foster metaphysical realization, i. e., Moksha or Nirvaana. All elements of the society could be measures in terms of whether this goal was being pursued or accomplished and if it was not then the particular element that was failing in that purpose could be judged faulty, poor or inferior in relation to other elements or institutions of the society that were pursuing or accomplishing this goal. This metaphysical pragmatism goes deep into the philosophy of the whole notion of a traditional society as AKC understood it and it undoubtedly seemed a novel idea to modern Western philosophers that an entire culture could be set upon a single goal for all members of that culture. Stated quite boldly then, the purpose of a traditional society was simply to provide all members of that society with metaphysical realization. AKC reminds us often enough that in the West during the Middle Ages when the Christian Church and scholastic philosophy dominated the lives of the people and the loyalties of the state a similar kind of theocratic society existed then as existed in traditional India, i.e., in India before the corruptions from the modern West began to settle in. Further these societies can be judged by the kind of persons they produce such that the societies are superior if the citizens of those societies pursue and accomplish metaphysical change, self-realization, within themselves. So we have identified the goal of a traditional society, i.e., a metaphysically grounded and self-transformational society, and we conclude that such a traditional society for AKC is superior to a non-traditional society; in other words, the Indian Hindu society of the 19th and early 20th century and the Western Christian society of the 12th and l3th centuries are both superior to the modern Indian and modern Western of the middle 20th centuries.

The means by which these traditional societies accomplish their metaphysical, i.e., transformational, goal is through the institutions of the society, in particular through the institution of the priestly hierarchy. The priesthood passes on the myth that explains the origin and goal of the society, and it preserves the sacred means to that goal, e.g., the various sacrifices, the yogas, the secret rites and rituals, and so on. Traditional societies preserve these means to self-transformation within their oral traditions in order to keep the secret of the way to self-transformation from the uninitiated who might abuse the sacred tradition. And here we come to the centre of AKC’s concern; for a literate society always runs the risk of such abuse far more than an illiterate society where in the former publicly publishing the sacred materials that were meant only for the initiated and the qualified is a constant threat. AKC’s concern is perhaps not far different from the concern expressed by other defenders of sacred and oral traditions, in particular the Druids of ancient Gaul. For example, if the account given by Julius Caesar is correct, the Druids would also have attacked the spread of literacy in order to protect their sacred disciplines:

The Druids are by custom not present during war nor do they pay taxes; indeed, they have immunity from military service and exemption from all public duties. Inspired by such rewards many assemble together for instruction from the Druids sent there by parents and kin. There they are said to learn by heart a great number of sacred verses. And some remain thus in study for 20 years. Nor do they regard it as right to commit these verses to writing, while in other matters, in private and public business, they use the Greek script. I think that they have established this oral tradition for two reasons: They do not wish the sacred discipline to be carried off by the masses, and they do not wish those who do learn to trust more to writing than to memory. For it usually happens to very many when they have the support of writing that they neglect both the diligence of thorough learning and the cultivation of their memories. (J. Caesar, De Bello Gall. VI. 14, translated by Arthur Herman, Jr.)

The Druids and AKC are both of the opinion that literacy threatens and destroys the means and the goals that the sacred or traditional society has established.

But I would contend, once again, that it is not how something is communicated but rather what is communicated that threatens and destroys traditional societies. The means to metaphysical transformation can be as easily and effectively passed on to the qualified pupil by the written word as by the oral. One has only to mention the discovery of ancient texts and the resurgence of interest in their content all quite outside the oral tradition that originally produced them to realize that the method of communication, the system that delivers the message, is far less important than the message, itself, to the qualified pupil. In a healthy society it is immaterial how metaphysical knowledge is passed on; in a diseased society, one which has lost its way because its metaphysical roots have decayed, it is useless to speculate on whether a literate or an oral tradition is superior.

Finally, let me say that AKC’s brilliant analysis of the traditional society is somewhat misplaced. It is not literate societies that we have to fear, nor should our concern be with the literate versus the oral traditions. The world has gone too far along the literate route and we can never return to the oral and illiterate past, though the idea of attempting such a move is intriguing. Our attention must be placed now on the nature of the information, the quality of the information, that the literate society or the oral society dispense. In other words, junk literature is still junk whether it is dispensed in writing or by word of mouth. We have to deal with the bugbear of information and not the bugbear of literacy. We must be on guard against those who claim that information has an absolute value, that somehow or other, the more one knows about anything and everything the better one is going to be. To make the point more clearly, let me conclude here by restating AKC’s remarks quoted earlier, inserting “information” for “literacy” where such insertion seems appropriate:

My real concern is with the fallacy involved in the attachment of an absolute value to information, and the very dangerous consequences that are involved in the setting up of “information getting” as a standard by which to measure the cultures of unlettered peoples.

These “unlettered peoples” we would probably refer to as “pre-industrial peoples” today.

Your blind faith in information not only obscures for us the significance of other skills, so that you care not under what sub-human conditions, a man may have to earn his living, if only he can gather in more information, no matter of what kind, in his hours of leisure; it is also one of the fundamental grounds of inter-racial prejudice (For example, judging people by how much information they have at the tips of their memories–I think of the current controversy in the West over race and I. Q.) and becomes a prime factor in the spiritual impoverishment of all the “ward” people whom you propose to civilize.

I’m not sure if AKC would approve of such changes in his essay. But the times and our own current spiritual needs and intellectual expectations in these times seem to make it clear that we are currently faced with a new and overwhelming problem, the bugbear of information.