The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 37

In the doctrine of Marx and Engels, the proletariat appears endowed with all the qualities a.s.sociated with Divinity in the prototypic Book (the Old Testament): omniscience, omnipotence, and right almost all the time. There is a self-creative moment in the historic process they described, resulting from political activism and commitment to change in the world. No one should lightly discard the Utopian core or the ideal embodied in the doctrine. After all, n.o.body could argue against a world of freedom where each person partic.i.p.ates with the best one has to offer, and is rewarded with everything one needs. Free education, free medical care, access to art and liberty in a context of limitless unfolding of talent and harmony with nature, of shared wealth and emanc.i.p.ation from all prejudices-all this is paradise on Earth (minus religion).

It should be pointed out that, within the system, the entire practical human experience related to literacy-and the accomplishments listed above are literacy- based-was subsidized.

In no other part of the world, and under no other regime, were so many people subjected to literacy. That the system failed should not lead anyone to ignore some of the achievements of the people regimented under a flag they did not care for: fascinating art, interesting poetry and music, the ma.s.sive collection and preservation of folklore, spectacular mathematics, physics, and chemistry arose from beneath terror and censors.h.i.+p. To survive as an artist, writer, or scientist meant to force creativity where almost no room for it was left.

Under no other regime on Earth did people read so much, listen to music more intensely, visit museums with more pa.s.sion, and care for each other as family, friends, or as human beings, episodes of brutality notwithstanding. It is too simplistic to accept the line that people read more in East Europe and the Soviet Union because they had nothing else to do. The pragmatic framework was set up under the a.s.sumption of permanence, stability, centrality, and universality founded on literacy.

It goes without saying that the misuse of language (in political discourse and in social life) played its role in the quasi-unanimous silent rejection of the system, even more in silent, cowardly complicity with it. When the literate machine of spying on the individual fell apart, people saw themselves in the merciless mirror of opportunistic self- betrayal. The records will stand as a testimony that writing does not lead only to Solzhenitsyn's novels, Yevtushenko's poetry, Shoshtakovich's music, and the romantic Samizdat, but also to putrid words about others, kin included. The opaqueness of literacy partially explains why this is possible. Something other than the opaqueness granted by literacy (i.e., complicity established in society) explains how it became a necessary aspect of that society. Germans were not better, exceptions granted, than their fascist leaders; the peoples in the Soviet block were not better, exceptions granted again, than the leaders they accepted for such a long time.

But what went relatively unnoticed by experts in East European and Soviet studies, as well as by governments fighting the Cold War, is the dynamics of change. The system was economically broke, but still militarily viable (though overrated) and over-engaged in security activities-tight control of the population, economic and political espionage, active attempts to export its ideology. The structure within which people were to realize their potential-one of the ideals of communism-had few incentives. But all this, despite the impact of the yet unfinished revolution, is only the tip of the iceberg, the visible side when one looks from the riverbank of the free world where incentives lead to self-sufficiency and complacency. The major aspect is that the dynamics of the system was severely affected by artificially maintaining a pragmatic framework and a system of values not suited to change. This applies especially to the major s.h.i.+ft-from the industrial model to post-industrial society, to a context of practical experiences of human self-const.i.tution freed from the restrictions carried over from the politics of mind and body control-experienced by the rest of the western world.

Levels of expectation beyond the satisfaction of immediate needs (food, clothing, shelter), and of literacy-a.s.sociated expectations (education, access to art and literature, travel), could not be satisfied unless and until levels of efficiency impossible to reach in the pragmatic context of industrial societies were made possible by a new pragmatics. Despite the fact that more writers, more publis.h.i.+ng houses, more libraries, as well as more artists, theaters, opera houses, symphonic orchestras, research inst.i.tutes, and more museums than in the rest of the world were politically and economically supported in the Eastern Block (almost to the extent that the secret police was), activities related to literacy had only a short-term impact on the individuals subjected to or taking advantage of them. This was proven dramatically by the proliferation of commercially motivated newspapers and publications (p.o.r.nography among them) following the breakdown of the power structure in various countries of the Block, and followed by an even faster focus on entertainment television and obsession with consumption.

The main events leading to the breakdown-each country had its own drama, once the major puppeteer was caught off-guard by events in the Soviet Union-took place with the nation staring at the TV screens, seduced by the dynamics of the live transmission for which literacy and prior literate use of the medium were never well equipped. The live drama of the hunt for Ceausescu in Romania, the climax of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the events in Prague, Sofia, and Tirana continued the spirit of the Polish tele-drama in the s.h.i.+pyards. It then took another turn, during the attempted coup in the Soviet Union, practically denying the literate media any role but that of late chroniclers. The initial lessons in democracy took place via videotape. Various networks, from WTN (World-Wide Television News) to CNN, but primarily the backward technology of the fax machine, which absorbed essential literacy into a focused distribution of individual messages, provided the rest. As primitive as digital networks were, and still are in that part of the world, they played an important role. Not political manifestos or sophisticated ideological doc.u.ments were disseminated, but images, diagrams, and live sequences. In the meanwhile, entertainment took over almost all available bandwidth. What the rest of the world consumed in the last fifteen years (along with fas.h.i.+on, fast food chains, soft drinks, and consumer electronics) penetrated the lives of those whose revolt took place under the banner of the right to consume. Here, as in the rest of the world, the spiritual and the political split for good. The spiritual gets alimony; the political becomes the executor of the trust.

What failed the system was the lack of understanding of all the factors leading to new productive experiences: the framework for optimal interaction of people, circ.u.mstances of progressive mediation and further specialized human self-const.i.tution, a practical context of networking and coordination based on individual freedom and constraints a.s.sumed by individuals as they define their expectations. Parallel to the literate structure of a politics that failed is the experience of churches in the Soviet Block. In a show of defiance towards the political dictators.h.i.+p, people attended church, itself a mainstay of literate praxis (independent of the book or books they adopt for their basic program). Once religion was able to a.s.sert its literate characteristics through the imposition of constraints-so like those of the political system just overthrown- churches began to experience the low attendance that the rest of the world is already familiar with.

No matter how much more quickly events take place in our age, it is probably still too early to understand all the implications of the major political event represented by the fall of the Soviet empire. For instance, in a context of global economy, how can one correctly evaluate the emergence of new national states and forceful national movements when the post-national state and the trans-national world are already a reality? The question is political in nature. Its focus is on ident.i.ty. Ident.i.ty reflects all the relations through which people const.i.tuted themselves as part of a larger ent.i.ty-tribe, city, region, nation-defined by biological and cultural characteristics, shared values, religion, a sense of common s.p.a.ce and time, and a sense of future.

A world of worlds

"We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians," declared Ma.s.simo d'Azeglio during the first meeting of the Italian Parliament. A little over 100 years old, the nation-state was the most tangible product of the political practical experience in the pragmatic context whose underlying structure is so well reflected in literacy. Together with the nation-state, the modern notion of nationality was defined and became a major force of political life. As part of the political consciousness in the age of industrial production, national consciousness played a very precise role, ultimately expressed in all forms of nationalism. It unified all those whose similarities in biological characteristics, language, lore, and practical experiences were const.i.tuted in a framework of shared resources and political goals. Germany came into existence through a unifying language (Hoch Deutsch) and was consolidated through its literacy. Italy went through a similar process. In other instances, nations were born as a result of voluntary political acts: the United States, the nations declared independent after the fall of the Soviet Union, Croatia, Macedonia, some of the Arab countries, and a number of African nation-states, once colonial powers could no longer afford to resist the force of change. As with everything pertaining to politics, national politics entails expectations corresponding to past phases (the basic pa.s.sions that once made up tribal solidarity), to instances of human interaction well overhauled by the new realities of the integrated world.

What, if any, explanation can one find in the dissolution of Yugoslavia? Against the background of conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this question has divided many well intentioned intellectuals (not only in France) inclined to solve an absurd situation of genocide. Intellectuals questioned what appeared to be irreducible religious contradictions between Catholic and Orthodox Christians, or between Christians and Moslems. The old conflict between the pro-fascist Croatian Ustash and the Serbian Chetniks dedicated to the vain goal of a greater Serbia was also on their minds. They also wondered what the chances of the new nation-states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and many of the autonomous regions and republics of the former Soviet Union were. How will the Commonwealth of Independent States function once goals and purposes of nation-states take over those a.s.sumed in a nebulously defined commonwealth? And how can one explain the enormous discrepancy between the attempt to const.i.tute a broad European Community (actually, the United Markets of Europe), while other parts of Europe break into small nation-states? How much of the underlying tribalism, or provincialism, or religious adherence, or how much of the functions of literacy at work can be read in the political fervor of nationalistic activism of our day? One answer, no matter how encouraging, cannot address a full paragraph of questions. These questions suggest that the politics of nations is so multifaceted that understanding it requires not so much rehas.h.i.+ng the past but focusing on the broad picture of its dynamics.

Between the old city-state, the early empire (Roman, Byzantine), the medieval world of local attachments (pertaining to shared s.p.a.ce used mainly for agriculture, and under the firm grip of the Papacy), and today's world of ma.s.s immigration and human displacement (for political, economic, religious, or psychological reasons), we find inserted the settled universe of nation-states and their respective literacies. In this universe, literacy and religion undergird the legal system. Politics defines national ident.i.ty, subsuming language, ethnicity, ways of working, culture, superst.i.tions, prejudice, art, and science.

Within the nation-state's borders, citizens are subjected to a political practical experience of h.o.m.ogeneity, centralism, and uniformity, required by the efficiency expectations of the Industrial Revolution. The ideal of cosmopolis, the all- embracing empire of reason declared by the Stoics, runs counter to the ideal of the nation-state, which celebrates national reason and willingness to compete with others.

When the pragmatic circ.u.mstances leading to today's global economy started exercising their action, an all-embracing empire of a different nature resulted. The new statement says that Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, animists, even atheists, although bearing a national ident.i.ty, are part of the global economy. Not surprisingly, political action and economic integration each run its own course. Commerce, with all its imbalances and unfairness, the almost uncontrollable financial dynamics, and migration of industries take more and more frequently what appears as the necessary path of globality.

Politics, even when it acknowledges globality, focuses on national definitions. To an outside observer, a nation's politics appears insignificant, powerless in comparison to economic forces, although it claims to control these forces through monetary policies, labor laws, and trade regulations.

The trans-national world has its own impetus. It continues to evade political constraints, ascertaining its own life. It was described from the perspective of its financial and economic condition as The Borderless World (the t.i.tle of Kenichi Ohmae's book), within which nationality counts only marginally. This is yet another reason for the low interest in public life on the part of the wealthy in our days.

When the new southern republics freed by the breakdown of the Soviet Union debate which form of writing they should adopt-Arabic, Cyrillic, or Roman-and how to define their respective nations, they still look for national identifiers.

Turkmanis and Uzbekistanis, Latvians and Estonians, Ukrainians and Georgians, Hungarians and Romanians, and enterprising Poles comb their territories in search of business opportunities. The same takes place in many other countries, whose citizens are obsessed more with prosperity than with sovereignty, with access to financial means more than with self-determination, and with cooperative effort, even involving traditional enemies, more than with a const.i.tutional foundation or universal protection of human rights. Interestingly enough, while national ident.i.ty is more and more superseded by people's a-nationality, many new countries, emerging as a result of the a.s.serted right to self-determination, face as their first task not the future but the past: definition of their national ident.i.ty. Nevertheless, the civilization of illiteracy does not promise that Italians can be made for all these new countries. Rather, these nations will become, in not necessarily satisfying ways, a-nationals, citizens of the world economy. Many of them will make up the new immigrant populations settled in ethnic neighborhoods where access to consumption will arouse a nostalgia for some remote homeland.

No one can or should generalize. Many prejudices still heat the furnaces of hatred and intolerance. Enough citadels from the past pragmatic framework maintain hopes for expansion and cultivate a politics appropriate to ages long pa.s.sed. But regardless of such unsettling developments, the nation-state enters an age of denationalization, absorbed into a world of economic globality, less and less dependent on the individual and thus less and less subject to political dogma.

Of tribal chiefs, kings, and presidents

Changes in the condition of human practical experiences effect changes in the self-identification of the individual and of groups of people. Emphasis is less and less on nature and shared living s.p.a.ce, and more on connections free of arbitrary borders, even of elements pertaining to culture and history. New political experiences, still subjected to expectations carried over from the past, do not actually continue the past. Accordingly, the nature of political experiences changes. a.s.sumptions regarding leaders.h.i.+p, organization, planning, and legality are redefined.

Tribal chiefs might well have turned, through the centuries, into the kings of the Middle Ages, and, with the advent of a new society, into presidents. There is, nevertheless, no reason to believe that in a universe of distributed tasks and ma.s.sive parallelism, a need for political centralism and hierarchy will remain. The president, for instance, is the king of the civilization of literacy; and his wife becomes the queen, in defiance of all the literate doc.u.ments that justify presidency.

Executive power, in conjunction with the legislative and judicial branches, implements ideals of liberal political democracy as these became essential to the pragmatics of industrial society. But once new circ.u.mstances emerge, the underlying structure reflected in the power structure undergoes change as well.

In the spirit of the dynamics of change, one should notice that, in a framework of non-hierarchic structures, there is no legitimate need for the presidency. Theoretic arguments, no matter how rigorous, are after all irrelevant if not based on related facts. New circ.u.mstances already made the function of president strictly ceremonial in many countries. In other countries, a president's ability to exercise power is impeded by laws that make this power irrelevant. Economic cycles, affecting integrated economies, turn even the most visionary heads of states (when they happen to be visionary) into witnesses to events beyond their control. Politics does not happen at levels so remote from the individual that individuals disconnect themselves from the political ceremonial. It happens closer and closer to where ideals and interest crystallize in the form of new human interactions.

Who would represent the country if the function of head of state were abolished? How can a country have a consistent political system? Who would be responsible for implementing laws? Such questions originate, without exception, within literacy's system of expectations. The extreme decentralization that is made possible by the new means of the civilization of illiteracy requires, and indeed stimulates, different political structures.

Instead of the self-delusion and demagoguery triggered by an idealized image of the politically concerned citizen, we should see the reality of citizens pursuing goals that integrate political elements. Literacy resulted in a politics of representation that ended up in effectively excluding the citizen from political decision-making. Rationalized in the structures of democracy, political ideals are now a matter of efficient human interaction. A president's performance is totally irrelevant to the exchange of information on networks of human cooperative effort. Agreements relevant to the people involved, executed in view of reciprocal needs and future developments, result more and more outside political inst.i.tutions, for reasons having little to do with them.

The majority of political functions, as they apply to presidents, congresses, or other political inst.i.tutions, still originate in forms characteristic of past political experiences. They are based on allegiances and commitments contradicted by the pragmatics of today's world. The fact that heads of states are also heads of the military (commander-in-chief) comes from the time when the strongest man became the leader. But in the modern world of growing emanc.i.p.ation, women are valid candidates as heads-of-state all over the world. However, s.e.xual bias has kept women from gaining the military competence that a commander-in-chief is expected to have. Another example: What is the reason for a president to be at the funeral of a deceased head-of- state? Blood ties used to bond kings and n.o.bility more strongly than political arguments, long before fast transportation could carry a monarch to the deceased in less time than it took for decay to set in. A farewell wished today at the funeral of a j.a.panese emperor, a Moslem ruler, or an atheistic president belongs to the spectacle of politics, not to its substance. The expensive, and delusive, literate performance of state funerals, oath-taking, inauguration, parades, and state visits is more often than not an exercise in hypocrisy. These spectacles please only through their cynical pandering to the people's desire for circus. Pragmatically relevant commitments are no longer the privilege of state bureaucracies. When the historic necessity of states winds up to be no more than the expression of remote tribal instincts, the literate inst.i.tution of state becomes superfluous.

Political idolatry, commercial nationalism, and ethnic vanity affect politics at many levels. Nationalism, emerging as a form of collective pride and psychological compensation for repressed instincts, celebrates gold medals at Olympic games, the number of n.o.bel Prize laureates, and achievements in the arts and sciences with a fervor worth a better cause. Borders of pride and prejudice are maintained even where they have de facto ceased to exist. No scientist who achieved results in his or her field worked in isolation from colleagues living all over the world. The Internet supports the integration of creative effort and ideas, beyond borders and beyond national fixations, often expressed as military priorities rather than as cooperation and integration. Art is internationally nurtured and exchanged.

Rhetoric and politics

Political programs, very much like hamburgers, cars, alcohol, sports events, artworks, and financial services, are marketed.

Success in politics is valued in market terms rather than in the increasingly elusive political impact. The expression "People vote their pocketbooks" bluntly expresses this fact. But are they voting? Poll after poll reveals that they are not. Illiterates used to be excluded from voting, along with women, Blacks in America and South Africa, and foreigners in a large number of European countries.

In an ideal world, the best qualified would compete for a political position, all would vote, and the result would make everyone happy. How would such an ideal world function? Words would correspond to facts. The reward of political practical experience would be the experience itself, satisfying the need to best serve others, and thus oneself as a member of the larger social family. This is a Utopian world of perfect citizens whose reason, expressed in the language of literacy, i.e., made available to everyone and implicitly guaranteed to be a permanent medium for interaction, is the guardian of politics.

We see here how authority, of the thinking human being, is established and almost automatically equated with freedom.

Indeed, the doctrine of individual conformity to rational necessity was expressed in many pragmatic contexts, but never as forcefully as in the context that appropriated literacy as one of its guiding forces.

In the horizon of literacy, the expectation is that the experience of self- const.i.tution as literate makes people submit their own nature to the rationale of literacy and thereby find fulfillment. In short, the belief that to be literate makes one respect his word, respect others, understand political expectations, and articulate one's ideas is more of an illusion.

Moreover, if political action could result in having everyone accept the values of literacy and embody them as their second nature, conflicts would vanish, people would all share in wealth and, moreover, would be able to abide by the standards of democracy. It even follows that the literate need to feel the obligation of inculcating literacy in others, thus creating the possibility of changing patterns of human experiences so that they reflect the demands of reason a.s.sociated with literacy.

Isaiah Berlin, among others, noted that the belief in a single encompa.s.sing answer to all social questions is indefensible.

Rather, conflict is an overriding feature of the human condition. This conflict develops between the propensity to diversity (all the ends pursued) and the almost irrational expectation that there is one answer-a good way of life-worth pursuing and which can be attained if the political animal acknowledges the primacy of reason over pa.s.sion, and freely chooses conformity to widely shared values over chaotic individualism.

Under the pragmatic circ.u.mstances of the civilization of illiteracy, the literate expectation of unanimous or even majority vote is less than significant. Voting results are as good an indicator of a society's condition as seismographs are of the danger of an earthquake. On election days, the results are known after the first representative sample makes it through the voting mechanism. Actually, the results are already at hand days before the election takes place. The means within our reach are such that it would suffice to commit a short interval of telephone time so that people who want to vote-and who know why they vote- can, and without having to go our of their way. Any other connection, such as the generalized cable infrastructure, connected to a central data processing unit outfitted for the event, would do as well. Such a strategy would answer only one part of the question: making it easy for people to vote. The second part regards what they are asked to vote for. The political process is removed from the exciting practice of offering authentic choice. Literacy-based political action is opaque, almost inscrutable. Accordingly, the citizen has no motivation for commitment and no need to express it through voting. There is a third part: the a.s.sumption that voting is a form of particpating in the power of democracy. No one aware of the dynamics of work and life today can equate the notion of majority with democracy. More often than not, efficiency is achieved through procedures of exception.

Under the circ.u.mstances of a global economy of fast change and parallel practical experiences, no president of a country, no matter how powerful, and no central political power can effectively influence events significant to the citizen. The civilization of illiteracy requires alternatives to centralism, hierarchy, sequentiality, and determinism in politics. It especially entails alternatives to dualism, whether embodied in the two- party system, the legislative and executive opposition, and lawfulness vs. illegality, for example. This implies a broad distribution of political tasks, in conjunction with a politics that takes advantage of parallel modes of activism, networking, open-ended policies, and self-determination at meaningful levels of political life. Political fear of vagueness can only be compared to the fear of a vacuum that once upon a time branded physics and political doctrines. Faster rhythms of existence and the acknowledged need to adapt to circ.u.mstances of action never before experienced-scale of politics, globality, scale of humankind-speak against many of the literate expectations of politics as a stabilizing form of human practice. Politics, if true to its call, should contribute to speeding up processes and creating circ.u.mstances for better negotiations among people who have lost their sense of political adherence, or even lost their faith in law and order.

In this global world, where scale is of major importance, politics is supposed to mediate among the many levels at which people involved in parallel, extremely distributed activities, partake in globality. Apportionment of goods, as much as the apportionment of rights pertaining to creative aspects of human practical experiences, on a scheme similar to auctioning, follow the dynamics of the market more closely than rigid regulations.

Awareness of this apportionment is a political matter and can be submitted to the concerned parties in forms of evolving opinions.

Politics has also to address the new forms of property and their impact on political values in the new pragmatic framework. For instance, the real power of information processing is in the interaction of those able to access it. One should not be forced to apply rules originating from the feudal owners.h.i.+p of language, or from the industrial owners.h.i.+p of machines, to the free access to information, or to networks facilitating creative cooperative efforts. The challenge is to provide the most transparent environment, without affecting the integrity of interaction. A specific example in this regard is legislation against computer hackers. Such legislation, as well as the much publicized Communication Decency Act, only s.h.i.+fts attention from the new pragmatic context-unprecedented challenges arising from very powerful technologies-to one of routine law enforcement.

Administrative reaction is the consequence of the built-in dualism, based on the clear-cut distinction between good and bad, characteristic of literacy-based politics.

A positive course of events can originate only from political experiences of individual empowerment. Wider choice and broader possibilities involve specific risks. Hacking is by no means an experience without precedent in past pragmatics. The German war code was hacked, and nations are very eager to confer honor upon other hackers of distinction: scientists who break the secrets of genetic codes, or spies who discover the secrets of the enemy. Examined from a literate political perspective, hacking, as a peculiar form of individual self-const.i.tution, can appear as criminal. In a political experience coherent with the pragmatics leading to the civilization of illiteracy, hacking appears on a continuum joining creativity, protest, invention, and non- conformity, as well as criminal intention. The answer to hackers is not a code of punishment of medieval or industrial inspiration, but transparency that will, in the long run, undermine possible criminal motivations. A society that punishes creativity, even when relatively misdirected, through its policies and laws punishes itself in the long run. Someone who works at his terminal for a company producing goods all over the world, and pursuing social and economic programs that effectively touch citizens of many cultures, different faiths, race, political creed, s.e.xual preference, different history and different expectations, partic.i.p.ates in the politics of the world more than the inst.i.tutions and the bureaucrats paid for functions that they cannot effectively fulfill. It is again pragmatics that makes us citizens of our small village or town, that integrates all of us, Netizens included, in the global world.

Judging justice

This short parenthesis in the discussion of politics can be justified by the fact that justice is the object of both politics and law. The practice of law is the practice of politics on a smaller stage. Political action, involving a new concept of law and justice, closer to the environment of industrial work, established not only that all (or almost all) were equal in respect to the law, but also that justice would take its own course. In the course of history, the various moments of change in the pragmatic framework were also moments of change in regard to the justice system. In incipient political praxis, rulers administered the law. Even today, a governor or president is the court of last resort in some legal cases. And law, like politics, relies on rhetoric, on language as the mediating mechanism of concepts.

In the course of history, the various moments of change in the pragmatic framework were also moments of change in regard to what today we call justice. The more powerful applied their own ideas of law under circ.u.mstances of incipient human practical experiences. It was the role of the appointed leader, whether in the magic of ritual, in tribes, in religion, in forms of settlement, to judge matters under dispute. Law focused on agreements, commitments, and integrity of the human body, of property, of goods, and of exchange. In time, the distance between what was done, affecting the balance of people's rights and obligation, and the reaction to it increased. A whole body of mediating elements, religion included, governed action and reaction. Just as myth and ritual did in their ways, major religious texts testify to how rules of living together and preserving life were established and implemented. The scale of society, reflected in the nature of the pragmatic context, played a crucial role in the process in respect to what was considered a crime, the type of punishment, and the swiftness of punishment.

What is of concern here is the change from the legal code elaborated in the framework of literacy and legal experience in the civilization of illiteracy. The inst.i.tution of law and the professions involved in it embody expectations of justice under a.s.sumptions of efficiency pertinent to human practical experiences. New lands were discovered, new property was created, and machines and people made higher productivity possible. Rights were fought for, access to education opened, and the world became a place of new transactions for which the law of the land, inspired by natural right, no longer sufficed. It was in this context that literacy stimulated both the practice of legality and the inquiry into the nature of human rights and obligations. But it is also in this context that the language of legal practical experiences commenced its journey into today's legalese that no ordinary person can understand. Raskolnikov, in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, criticized the "legal style"

of those educated as lawyers. "They still write legal papers that way." Though he remarks that the writing had "a kind of flourish to it..., yet look how illiterate his writing is." The criticism could be glossed over, due to its context, if it were not for an interesting remark: "It's expressed in legal language and if you use legal language, you can't write any other way."

Trying to cope with ambiguity in language forces the lawyer to look for precision.

The equivocal condition of the practice of justice is that law originates in the realm of political experiences, but needs to be implemented free of politics, i.e., regardless of who is in power. The blindfolded G.o.ddess holding the scales of justice is expected to be objective and fair. The separation between judicial and governing ent.i.ties is probably the highest achievement of the political system based on literacy. But it is also the area where, under circ.u.mstances of practical experiences different from those based on the underlying structure of literacy, the need to change is critical. This applies to new means of maintaining a just system for people less affected by the subjectivity of those holding the balance of power, and more by the ability to process information relevant to any object of dispute. The blindfolded G.o.ddess already uses X- ray vision in order to substantiate claims and counterclaims. Modeling, simulation, expert genetic testimony, and much more became part of the justice routine. Each party in a trial knows in advance what type of jury best serves its interests. The context for all these changes sheds light on their political meaning. If the practical experience of politics and justice are disconnected, the effectiveness of both suffers.

Politics stimulated change in respect to the perception of democracy, civil rights, political authority, and welfare. It demystified the origin, function, and role of property, and introduced a generalized level of relativity and uniform value.

Law, on the other hand, supposed to protect the individual, should therefore be less inclined to trade off fairness for the lowest common denominator. Comparing this ideal to real legal practice is an exercise in masochism. The ever increasing, and fast increasing, human interaction via market mechanisms was followed by instances of conflict and expectations of negotiation. Without any doubt, the most pervasive mediating role is played in our day by legal professionals.

Due to its own self-interested dynamics, the legal profession insinuates itself in every type of practical experience, from multinational business to relations between individuals. Lately, it is involved in finding a place for itself in the world of new media, involving copyright laws and private rights versus public access. So one cannot say that law, as opposed to politics, is not proactive. The problem is that it is so in a context bound to literacy, and in such a way that style transcends substance.

Latin, reflecting the origin of the western legal experience, used to be the language of law. Today, few lawyers know Latin.

But they are well versed in their own language.

Legalese is justified by the attempt to avoid ambiguity in a given situation. There is nothing wrong with this. What is wrong is when legal language and the procedures encoded in legal language do not meet the pragmatic expectation, which is justice.

Law and justice are not the same thing. A good case in point is the recent case of the State of California vs. O. J. Simpson.

The spectacle of the legal procedure showed how a literate practice ended up convoluting justice. In fact, literate law is not meant to serve justice. Its purpose is to use the law to acquit a client. Allan Derschowitz claimed that the lawyer's duty is to his or her client, not to justice. This statement is far from the expectation that each member of society has.

Therefore law loses its credibility because it undermines the notion of the social contract.