Writing, No / Writing, Yes

From Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors

Writing, No
"Some five thousand years before Champollion, the god Thoth traveled to Thebes and offered King Thamus of Egypt the art of writing.  He explained hieroglyphs and said that writing was the best remedy for poor memory and feeble knowledge.  The king refused the gift: "Memory? Knowledge? This invention will encourage forgetting.  Knowledge resides in truth, not in its appearance. One cannot remember with the memory of another.  Men will record, but they won't recall.  They will repeat, buy they will not live.  They will learn of many things, but they won't understand a thing."

Writing, Yes
"Ganesha is stout, thanks to his love of candy, and he has the ears and trunk of an elephant.  But he writes with human hands.  He is the master of initiations, the one who helps people begin their work.  Without him, nothing in India would ever get underway.  In the art of writing as in everything else, the first step is what counts.  Any beginning is a grand moment in life, so Ganesha teaches, and the first words of a letter or a book are as fundamental as the first bricks of a house or a temple." 


From the notebook of JMRL (me)

Writing No - false histories presented as fact
Writing Yes - original stories maintain their integrity through the generations
Writing No - living through the words of others instead of one's own life
Writing Yes - creativity and intelligence exploding on the page, recorded forever
Writing No - words can harm in a more profound and permanent way than sticks and stones
Writing Yes - communication spreads between communities and continents
Writing No - the pen is mightier than the sword
Writing Yes - the pen is mightier than the sword
Writing No - we lose the human face and touch of communication
Writing Yes - the world at my fingertips
Writing No - a power tool to separate the cans from the cannots
Writing Yes - finding the power of one's voice and immortalizing it
Writing No - concrete evidence against you
Writing Yes - the dead still speak
Writing No - escape from reality
Writing Yes - escape from reality

feel free to add to the list... or make your own!