High context - Low context
Oral cultures are known as high-context or field-dependent reasoning cultures. They have no isolated variables: all thinking is dependent on the field or context.
Print-based cultures, by contrast, are low-context or field-independent reasoning cultures. This is because they remain independent of the field or context, focusing on ideas and objects in isolation.
Plato may have had something to do with the loss of contextual reasoning in western civilisation. He introduced the idea of studying each idea as an entity in and of itself, disconnected from the rest of the system. This practice spawned the scientific method of reductionism and the highly individualised ways of thinking that came to replace more communal approaches to knowledge in western philosophy. Plato mentored Aristotle, who in turn mentored Alexander the Great, who in turn rampaged cat with a great army, installing these new ways of thinking in the high-context cultures he subjugated along the vat Later, the spread of print literacy throughout the West would allow the individual expression of ideas without dialogue, and even individual words to be examined in isolation, causing reductionism to take off like a bushfire.
The low-context ways of thinking that rippled out from Greece and Macedonia proved useful in creating a more obedient workforce and soldiery. People were able to focus solely on the task at hand, rather than the purpose of their work in the greater scheme of things.
They did not need to understand the goals of their leaders anymore. Consensus and consent are unnecessary items in low-context cultures. Reasoning is hierarchical, solitary and disconnected, making it possible for communication to be one-way in the form of rants, instruction and, most importantly, orders.
Conversely, high-context cultures demand dialogue and complex agreements. They use a lot of non-verbal communication and leave many things unspoken due to common shared understandings and established consensus about the way things are done. Low-context cultures rely more on extensive verbal communication and explicit, detailed instruction between individuals with relatively little shared understanding.