Ignorance is bliss.

[jackofallgeeks]

lj-userpic: wrath

This Article, which I read yesterday... I don't know. I can't really process how it makes me feel; 'enraged' is the closest I can come, though maybe 'dumbfounded' is a better term. My vocabulary fails me. I can not understand how it could be said casually, almost pleasantly, that in the future most people won't be able to read, and that's OK, good even. To imply that we will be better off whn all u c is sheit like ths, txt messaging and AOL-grammar being the norm. People aren't aware enough of their environment as it is, when they can read and choose not to, and there's supposed to be an advantage when people simply can't read?

OK, ok, yeah, they aren't talking about complete illiteracy. They're talking about... what, grown men reading at a fourth grade level (or lower) and that being OK? -shakes head- That still sits wrong with me; it makes me ill. One of my great vices is that of intellectual elitism, that I feel superior by virtue of my education (sometimes, I think, justifiably, though there's a lot I don't know, especially the sort of knowledge one can only get through experience). But to say that someone might be better off, or even just as well, for knowing less?

The bit, I think, that really sticks me is that the article reduces man to a cog in The great Machine. Some cogs are specially designed, sculpted and honed and taught how to read for a very specific purpose. other cogs, which needn't be so delicately handled to perform their function, get hard-caste into a crude form that serves it's purpose. No need expending extra effort on a cog if it'll work just fine as is. My personal belief is that knowledge refines and perfects man; that man is better as such for knowing more. granted, it's not the only virtue, nor the best, but it is worthy of pursuit.

Gah, morning meeting to attend.

Comments

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

But, see, part of what bothers me about this is it's not about the internet; not directly, anyways. It's about... it's about how reading isn't necessary. It's about how a man with little vocabulary and no sense of grammar can stumble through life relatively well, generally absorbing what he's been told and communicating adequately enough the information he needs to communicate. But Leslie below makes a good point in that literacy allows people to gather their own information -- and, tangentially, a keystone in brainwashing is depriving the subject the means of gathering his own information; he knows only what you tell him and has no way of checking the facts (not unlike American media, I think...). but even more than that, psychologically speaking, the words you have to communicate with in great part determine what and how you can even think. Without words for a thing, without describing a notion, it's impossible to get a grasp on it. It's arguable that this is a flaw in modern man, that perhaps a more primitive creature could think in terms of sensation alone and not be constrained the way most of us are to think in terms of words (or numbers, for the mathematically inclined), but still...!

This subject gets me too fired up, I think...  ^_^;;