It is open to debate whether the invention of the printing press was by itself responsible for ending feudal society in Europe, but there is no doubt that where a print culture has flourished, so, too, has individualism. It is easy to see why. In the Middle Ages, people learned within a network of personal relations. In these largely preliterate societies, as in traditional societies outside of Europe even today, knowledge about life was transmitted by rehearsal, for there were no written documents that were widely accessible. The tribe or clan would relive its past together, reaffirm its meaning, reappropriate the old wisdom, and in some cases reaffirm fiath in the old gods [not unlike what Deuteronomy depicts in which Moses and Israel renew the covenant given them by Yahweh]. This was done collectively
through a variety of forms, such as dance, religious ritual, and stylized narrative. With the arrival of the printing press, it became possible and feasible to transmit all of the old wisdom through books rather than in the old ways. The book, as a result, rendereed the community redundant.
He goes on,
Under the aegis of television, however, a strange reversal begins to take place, ... . With our electronic wizardry, we are able to relay whatever meaning is to be found within the modern world by a means other than the printed page and in a way that replaces the printed page. We are creating a new trible based not on relational but electronic connections. We are creating a new tribal democracy that has the character of the tribe while retaining the form of a democracy. It is a tribe in which self-understanding comes less from the world and more from sight and sound, less from thought and more from experience.
What I find worth noting here is the recognition that there is a profound role for one's geographic and/or ethnic community to play in one's self-understanding; it does "take a village" in one sense. But this new "village" or tribe, as Wells calls it, is not the relational or personal one of ethnicity, geography, or even religion; the tribe of which TV makes us members
no longer bears much resemblance to the family, community, or religious tradition that used to serve this purpose. Now it is an impersonal society, as mirrored in the mass media, that typically confirms private choices and assures the individual that he or she is really not that different from others.
