In the following five statements, I have paraphrased Ong's relationist thesis to accentuate the idea of how a contributing factor (the Gutenberg printing press) works: (1) No print culture, no modern capitalism as we know it in Western culture. (2) No print culture, no modern science as we know it in Western culture. (3) No print culture, no modern democracy as we know it in Western culture. (4) No print culture, no Industrial Revolution as we know it in Western culture. (5) No print culture, no Romantic Movement in literature and the arts as we know it in Western culture. For Ong, the great cultural divide is the divide between modernity and pre-modern cultures, and this divide emerges in print culture in the West.
Ong himself rose to a non-corpuscular orientation toward life as he studied the media and literature. By his example, he in effect challenges us to rise to a non-corpuscular orientation toward life as we study the media and literature. Literacy in print culture has an especially strong visualist orientation that is part of our Western cultural conditioning. To reflect on our own individual cultural conditioning requires us to reflect carefully on our own individual consciousness.
In conclusion, Ong's multivariate account of Western cultural history enables us to understand not only the exceptionalism of Western culture as a cultural juggernaut but also the exceptionalism of American culture as a cultural juggernaut, because American liberal culture is the culmination and epitome of Western culture. Moreover, American liberal culture (i.e., our civic freedom under the rule of law in our experiment with representative democratic government and our economic freedom in our capitalist economic system), however imperfect, is the model that all non-Western cultures around the world today should aspire to. The catch is that the key features that Ong singles out for attention in Western cultural history can all be transplanted to any non-Western culture in the world today, primarily through Western education and Western languages such as English. During a recent visit to China, Diane Sawyer of ABC News learned that there are more people in China today who speak English than there are in the United States. Ong has told the world not only how American exceptionalism came into existence historically but also how any non-Western culture in the world today can emulate American exceptionalism if they want to go to the trouble of doing so.
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