“In the beginning there was the unbroken truth, a divine Unity, the Limitless Light of the Godhead — a time when all was One. But perfect symmetry is sterile, and holds only limitless Potential. The symmetry must be broken for diversity to bring forth life. The very pressures of Divine Being forced a breaking of this Unity. In order for Creation, there must be a Big Bang, a breaking of symmetry . . . the Word must be spoken and the Godhead must fall down in a fertilizing shower of divine sparks.“ (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow)
For some Profound Reason (or not), the Old Testament seems obsessed with communication and interpretation: mediums and dream interpreters; messages lost and found; distorted signs; noise and misrecognized transmissions. God ‘calls’ Man rather often and annoyantly, it seems. Moreover, he calls upon man’s responsibility (German Verantwortlichkeit) to fulfill his calling (German Beruf, Dutch beroep) – to answer (antwort) to his calling, to take upon himself the task that is his calling. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber discusses Luther’s translation of the Bible and his concept of the calling (Beruf).
According to Weber, the hebrew concept for ‘calling’ is derived from a root which denotes “to send”, meaning originally a “task” – the word came to be used for any sort of (slave) labour, work ordained by Kings. It is also connected to a similar Hebrew term meaning “assignment, task, lesson” or “duty”. Ones calling means: to accept and act out ones fate (Dutch lot) or assigned task, to take ones position (alternatively also ones ‘lot’).
1 Corinthians: 7 (Be Satisfied in Your Called State)
7:17 Only as the Lord hath distributed to each man, as God had called each, so let him walk
(7:17 Doch wie einem jeglichen Gott hat ausgeteilt, wie einen jeglichen der HERR berufen hat, also wandle er. Und also schaffe ich’s in allen Gemeinden.)
7:20 Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called
(7:20 Ein jeglicher bleibe in dem Beruf, darin er berufen ist.)
Incidentally, the word ‘task’ and ‘tax’ form a doublet (are etymological twins) related to the Latin verbs taxāre (‘to evaluate, fix/assess payment, which morphed into tasca in certain Latin dialects) and the verb tangere, meaning ‘to touch’. Notice that the metaphor of touching is often referenced by people converted to Christianity by means of a ‘revelation’, as having been ‘touched by (the hand of) God’. Together with the roots of the Idea of a God in primordial debt-structures (Graeber 2011, Miller, 2010) and as a duty to (answer to the call) of God, the notion of a ‘touching’ forms such a particular constellation.
Contrary to the discourse of eyes that see, of visions, of light and darkness, we have here a discourse of ears, of sounds and silences and of tactile experiences (‘touching). Oftentimes, communication between God and Man is established through his very own private courier, the Archangel Gabriel, who announces his/her coming by sounding a horn (shaped like a the graph of a mathematical paradox, also known as Gabriel’s horn or Torricelli’s trumpet). The horn is the instrument of choice when it comes to announcing an important message worth hearing. When Gabriel calls, you better confess, for Judgement Day is a-coming. When you hear one of the seven trumpets of the apocalypse – you better run and hide!
The trumpet or horn was also the instrument of choice when it came to announcing the arrival of the post by the first mail couriers or postmen (Dutch postbode). Travelling swiftly through remote villages that were just getting used to the existence of intercity roads and alien tresspassers, these strange, speedy and noisy horsemen that travelled day and night, would loudly announce the arrival of letter, as well as the possibility of handing over new messages to be taken further up the post road.
It is hard to grasp or imagine from our perspective the astonishment of such yet unheard of phenomena back then. But perhaps these premodern folks in their magical mindsets associated the nightly interventions and callings of these alien mail carriers and tax collectors with the nocturnal animals that they had to deal with since the beginning of time, perhaps those grain-stealing and fearless animals such as foxes and badgers, which populated northern Europe. But I’ll leave that line of thought for now.
In any case, we see here a similarity in symbolisms between the Christian use of trumpets and horns on the one hand, and its function in the first professionally organized communication networks in the world on the other. The posthorn is obviously no longer used and replaced by more ‘modern’ equivalents, but nevertheless survives in the symbols and logos of present day postal and telecommunication services, as well as on stamps, mailboxes, and so on. Below, I attempted to formulate the following (perhaps rather premature) ‘working hypotheses’ related to this theme.
1. The totality of the modern world of (communication) technology can be interpreted as the continuation – through secular and profane means – of certain theological Notions, crystalized into one unified Project: the world as a Universal City.
2. This project consists of one basic operation: the excommunication of everything from itself (which is equivalent to the communication of all things with each other). The breaking of the One an the institution of Two-ness, the basis of all communication, circulation and exchange.
3. If the Divine Kingdom that is supposed to result from this Universal Excommunication is thought immanently, all seems lost. Save for the fact that only then can we always project a world. The former is the collapsing of the civitas dei (City of God) into the civitas terrena (City of Man). This is the theological precursor of globalization and the rise to prominence of earth-spanning communication and information networks that support the seemingly endless multiplication of dependencies in all spheres.
Not About Media 