The Chinese whisper effect happens for many reasons. One of which is that we don't live in an oral culture.
Eh? It's worth pointing out that Chinese whispers is much more likely to occur in an oral culture as opposed to one that documents events. Of course, even then man are prone to embellishment and mistake.
Children aren't trained or used to remember anything accurately or at short notice anymore.
With reference to what exactly? Do they not go through years upon years of schooling, with exams in place to check they
are trained and
do remember accurately?
Most study like parrots and repeat worse than most parrots.
Right then, and having said this, why are you seemingly trying to state that modern day people are more prone to Chinese whispers? The very meaning of "parrot" is one that copies what has been said to them in exactly the same way. That negates 'Chinese whispers'.
Even with the availability of books and papyrus, the spoken word was for long considered superior to the written word
And there is it's downfall. The majority of people could not read or write, and had no alternative but to try to retain facts of a story with all their human frailities: forgetfulness, embellishment, exaggeration, and so on.
While this might seem a relatively easy thing to do, the story told 1,000 or 2,000 years later will
never match the original. This is especially so when it is cross culture.
wisdom and knowledge that could only be securely contained within a living, breathing, thinking person, and taught to personally selected and trained individuals over a period of decades.
Securely contained? Oh please, surely you know a little more about mankind than that? As for being selectively taught - this is pure nonsense. Anyone with a mouth had the ability to pass on a story.
Chinese whispers rely on children playing a game, where the information is of no importance whatsoever
The daftest statement yet.
Religious events and Scripture is and has always been considered of utmost imortance to all involved, and to be guarded, treasured, transmitted and interpreted as often and with as much care and attention as it deserves.
And yet today the meaning of those stories differ from person to person, place to place, church to church. While the 'basics' have been retained - even those have morphed themselves over the years.
(from ffrf.org)
This shows how, given just a small amount of time, a story will be so prone to embellishment, exaggeration and Chinese whispers, that nobody would have the chance of sorting fact from fiction. Now we look 2,000 years later and it's even worse with entire groups of people having completely different ideas as to what happened or didn't happen. It is the inevitable outcome of any story.
It need not be intentionally misleading, a simple mistake will do the job. As an example look at the 'belief' that ostriches stick their heads in sand. They don't. Look at the 'belief' that humans only use 5/10% of their brains. They don't.
Alas it does not take a lot to misguide other humans to such a degree whereby something completely fictional is regarded as complete truth - happily accepted and taught to others.
And with something of this nature, we must look at the intentional changes/additions. Having heard a story from a different culture, one would undoubtedly change the key players. The gods now become a different god, the hero changes, (for instance - how modern day people view jesus as a white guy - which he would not have been. However, it is unlikely any westerner would have jumped into the christian ways if their god was imaged as a middle eastern man).
You ask any person what Santa looks like.. He's a fat guy with red clothes and a white beard. It is nothing more than an embellishment of a traditional figure the way Coca Cola felt like portraying it. Now go back to the original stories concerning this Santa bloke.. That is how easy it is to completely undermine and change a story so it suits a different culture, and a different way of life.
a) A story always starts orally, with the person involved, and he is always the authority
And even then nobody has a way of telling how much embellishment of exaggeration has been included. We all do it. When someone wants to tell a good story, it will most certainly involve a bit of dramatics, exaggeration and embellishment to make that story "come to life".
I could tell you a story of the day my daughter was born. I could do that in 5 words or 50,000 words. It's made worse given that my human brain cannot remember each and every detail, and the things it can remember might be slightly off-key to how it actually was. If I had have videotaped it or written the accounts down at that very moment, there wouldn't be so much of a problem, but these people didn't have that luxury. Someone spoke of an event the way they think it occurred, and then someone else sat down and wrote a second hand account of what they think happened and then 1,000 years later someone else tries - by which time the story has blown all out of proportion.
b) If he is satisfied that an account has been transferred accurately, he approves it
This is nonsense. And the word accurately means very little given the fact that the original story teller is as prone to exaggeration and embellishment just like the rest of us humans. He would still view the story as accurate even with a tonne of additions that his mind created in order to make the story better.
c) the approved accounts are copied and preserved with great care (through a canon or library; the "Bible" is both)
If this is the case, then every single written work is completely valid. From the Enuma Elish to the Mahabharata. So we were actually created by Marduk who slayed Tiamat etc etc etc.
Or are you suggesting that the people you don't know that wrote the biblical accounts told the truth and protected it, while every other culture made up some fallacious bullshit just to please the masses, or just to cheer up the kiddies?
You've dug yourself a gigantic hole.
a) Chinese whispers start out simple and end up complex -- often as garbage (because no reviewing has taken place)
See the image above.
b) Chinese whispers end up different than the original (i.e, meaning is lost, not preserved)
Sumerian creation stories vs the biblical accounts that came along two millennia later.
c) Chinese whispers have identifiable intermediary forms (which can be traced back to the source)
Only if you can round up each of those intermediary forms. However, tracing back to the source can be easy enough, (Sumerian creation accounts vs biblical accounts).
You are comparing the FBI with a fifth-grade birthday party -- which might not be totally unfair, but at the levels of accuracy we're talking about, its not justified.
This statement is simply ludicrous.
