Now, I would like to align Riesman's terminology about the three character patterns in American culture with Ong's sweeping account of Western culture.
Like all other human cultures around the world historically, Western culture originated in primary oral culture. In all forms of primary oral cultures around the world, aural-oral cognitive processing dominated the cultural conditioning, producing the world-as-event sense of life. The world-as-event sense of life is involved in the cultural conditioning of tradition-directed persons (also known as outer-directed persons).
Concerning the world-as-event sense of life, see David Abram's book THE SPELL OF THE SENSUOUS: PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE IN A MORE-THAN-HUMAN WORLD (1996).
However, in ancient Greek culture, visual cognitive processing emerged historically, producing the world-as-view sense of life in those persons who had been initiated into philosophic thought and expression. The world-as-view sense of life is involved in the cultural conditioning of inner-directed persons.
Concerning the emerging world-as-view sense of life, see Andrea Wilson Nightingale's book SPECTACLES OF TRUTH IN CLASSICAL GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THEORIA IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT (2004).
But after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the 1450s, educated people in Western culture emerged in unprecedented numbers, producing a certain critical mass of inner-directed persons -- in colonial American culture, for example.
Ong's perceptive book about the cultural constellation of infrastructures involved in print culture is RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON (2nd ed., 2004; 1st ed., 1958). Also see McLuhan's book THE GUTENBERG GALAXY: THE MAKING OF TYPOGRAPHIC MAN (1962).
However, in the 20th century, communication media that accentuated sound emerged, which over time contributed to an emerging new sensory mix in American cultural conditioning. Out of this emerging new mix in American cultural conditioning emerged the other-directed persons who worried Riesman (and Fromm).
No doubt Ong, like Riesman and Fromm, was an inner-directed person. Ong, like Pope Francis, was a Jesuit. Jesuit training involves inner-directedness on steroids. But Ong was not worried about the emerging other-directed persons who worried Riesman and Fromm.
In the meantime, the inner-directed Jesuits have recently taken to saying that they are men for others -- and to saying that Jesuit education today helps students to become persons for others.
No doubt Shakespeare stood astride the cultural juncture of his time.
Of Shakespeare's well-known characters, Julius Caesar, King Lear, and Othello symbolically represent tradition-directed persons (also known as outer-directed).
Prince Hamlet and Falstaff, especially in his speech deconstructing honor, and Prospero symbolically represent the kind of inner-directed persons emerging in print culture.
In effect, the 20th-century Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe stood astride basically the same cultural juncture in his native country that Shakespeare in his day stood astride in England, as Achebe's novel THINGS FALL APART (1958) and its sequel NO LONGER AT EASE (1960) sensitively show.
Harold Bloom's hyperbolic book SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN (1998) is a hymn of praise of inner-directed persons. Unfortunately, his subtitle seems to imply that the human had not been invented before Shakespeare. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, but the implication of his subtitle is a bit unsettling.
Besides, many Nazi's in Hitler's Germany were well-educated inner-directed persons.
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