Center and Edge--

This is just a response to the last couple posts about oral knowledge. As I've been commenting on everybody's posts I realized I was writing the same things as I have a couple times before ("it's interesting that cultures rise and fade, why do they do this?" sort of thing), then realized why I was on that one-track train.  As I've read these posts, I can't help but think back to Orson Scott Card's Children of the Mind. In the afterward of the story, he comments on an idea sparked by a Japanese writer, Kenzaburo Oe: some nations are at the center of the world, while most fall into the hole of being an edge nation.