Reading and Writing, Who Needs 'Em?

Antique example of unnecessary brain-strain from the paleo-human era

The problem with what I think of as modern people - which is pretty much any college graduate under 40, and quite a few older than that, across all points of the political spectrum - is that they are largely ignorant and are happy to remain just that way.  Oh yes, they know a great deal about TV shows and popular music and video games, and who's hot and who's not, and the precise number of carbs and calories in a rice cake, and whether Lindsay Lohan is in or out of jail this week, what arugula is, and even the airfares to Quito or Katmandu.  And of course they can work all sorts of ingenious tricks with the fab gadget of the moment, singlehandedly, even while doing pilates and six other things at the same time.

They are also, with few exceptions, quick - very quick - to let you know how stupid and backwards you are, you skanky holdover from the barbaric twentieth century, as well as arrogantly proud to be the last, best gift of the universe to planet Earth; and they think any idea thought up in the last 15 minutes is for the best, in this the best of all possible worlds - as long as it was thought up by somebody cool at this particular moment.  If you were cool this morning, or yesterday, or last week, sorry - that just doesn't cut it.  Better yet if you are going to be cool 15 minutes from now.  In coolness, as in sex, anticipation is ninety percent of the pleasure, you know?

Of course, this tendency to think that you and all of your (very cool) friends are the smartest, prettiest, most wonderful things ever seen under the sun - excepting only Lady Gaga, and she's already used up 10 of her 15 minutes - is part of human nature, and is an old, old story. 

It's also part of the natural effect that unmerited wealth brings to young people.  History books, not to mention what used to be called literature, are dripping with accounts of conceited young fops making perfect asses of themselves.  And yes, most - I don't say all, but most - people in this country, measured by the standards of living of all the world before the mid-twentieth century, are now rich kids, no matter what their actual income may be in dollars.  And behaving in the cavalier, self-absorbed fashion that rich kids have always done, while complaining loudly and long how unhappy they are.  Which is what happens when you don't have to work too very hard to survive.

Continued after the jump . . .

Ennui was the great complaint of the eighteenth century at the court of Versailles, and indeed all over the fashionable, well-to-do world of European aristocracy at the time.  Among the wealthy, the number of sufferers from this vague but painful ailment, for which no remedy could ever be found, vastly exceeded those afflicted by all other diseases combined.  In fact, among the haute monde it was considered rather déclassé, if not downright rude, not to complain about the agonies of your ennui.  Which, curiously enough, was a malady never felt by people who actually had to work for a living, and worry whether there was enough food to last out the week for their families.  Nowadays, in our incredibly affluent world, it has become commonplace for young people to introduce themselves in chat rooms, or whatever you call the cool social medium of the hour, with "I'm so bored."  Which makes your Head Trucker think that an enterprising grad student could get a good dissertation, or at least a master's thesis, by working out the comparisons between that age and this one.

I find it not only incredibly rude to say such a thing - what, do you think it's my responsibility to relieve your fucking boredom, like some kind of clown performing for your private benefit? - but also truly reprehensible in anyone over 10 years of age, with all his limbs and an able mind in an able body.  I learnt as a child that only boring people are ever bored, and I find it just as true now as it was then.  Especially now, when a world of miracles - think about it - is available at your very fingertips, all day and all night - if you can't persuade yourself to get up off the couch and actually do something constructive.

But I digress from my main point - people know more things about more different things than ever before, in some ways.  But they also know less about some extremely important things than ever, and are very proud to be so ignorant.  And are not in the least worried about that.  In fact, people are now actually demanding - and not only for themselves, but for their children as well - to be less educated and less capable of the most ordinary, elementary tasks than the last generation:  a singular thing in American history, I think. 

As witness this article, "Running Away from Reading":

From 1945 to 2000, or thereabouts, far more people than ever before in human history were expected to read, understand, appreciate, and even enjoy books. In 2005, Wendy Griswold, Terry McDonnell, and Nathan Wright, sociologists from Northwestern University, published a paper concluding that while there was a period in which extraordinarily many Americans practiced long-form reading, whether they liked it or not, that period was indeed extraordinary and not sustainable in the long run. "We are now seeing such reading return to its former social base: a self-perpetuating minority that we shall call the reading class."

And this one, "Cursive at a Crossroads":

Touch-typing on a computer keyboard has replaced hand-writing on a sheet of paper so fully that the Indiana Department of Education, in a memo to the state’s elementary school principals (April 25, 2011), has officially canceled cursive writing from the state curriculum, replacing it with keyboarding.

Some educators have been calling for the end of handwriting for years. But handwriting is not an antediluvian method of communication to be tossed aside in favor of e-learning, reports the Los Angeles Times (June 15, 2011). The motion of writing out letters and words and sentences by hand stimulates the brain in a way that keyboarding does not. Perhaps it is not so different than the way reading a book activates the brain differently than hearing the same information or watching it on a television screen. None of this is to say that computers and TV can’t be educational, but the tactile, memory-creating relationship between you and your language lessens once the re-creation of the letters by your own hand is taken out of the equation. . . .

It bears mentioning that a child who never learns to write cursive will also never learn to read cursive. The neglected art has already created a generation of schoolchildren, from third graders on up through high schoolers, to whom cursive is a foreign alphabet.

And a self-explanatory reader's comment from the Joe.My.God. post where I found this article:

Yay! What a waste of ink. Just another vehicle for many people to be pompous and condescending.

Cursive writing, one of the most ordinary things in the world, like brushing your teeth or counting by twos:  pompous and condescending. How very revealing.

Your Head Trucker has never understood, and never will, I suppose, why cursive writing is so haaaaard for so many people.  Learning to tie my own shoelaces was a bit tricky, too, once upon a time, but with just a little practice I soon got the hang of it.   And people use the in-built fine motor skills of their fingers to do all kinds of other tricky little tasks, day in and day out, from texting to stuffing olives to brain surgery - so why is cursive so difficult?  I just don't get it.  But then I can remember eagerly looking forward as a toddler to the time when I could write - the few remaining books from that early period of my life all have crayon scribbles in the flyleaves, which was me proudly "writing" in them.  I suppose we find it easy, or at least possible, to learn the things we consider important or valuable.  And disregard the rest.

And the problem doesn't stop with what these two articles discuss, it's even bigger than that:  your Head Trucker has actually heard a teenager say recently, about one of his schoolbooks:  "I wish I could find an online edition of this - it's hard for me to read things off a page in a book."  I am not making this up, swear to God.

Well.  What can you say to that?  And in fact, I suppose it really doesn't matter that the next generation, and any that may come after, will be unable either to read or to write:  no doubt long before things actually get to that point, the iPox-Bluetooth Subcutaneous Headdrive Terminal (iBSHT) with nebula memory and Feel-o-Rama will have eliminated any need for reading, writing, speaking, or even thinking at all.  Or even that nasty, disgusting, germ-ridden thing that used to be called sex, which will also be eliminated as being entirely too personal, like telephone calls and email.  And boring - oh my God, are you kidding?   "Meatgames, ugh.  My grandparents do that.  So last-century."

Reproduction, of course, will be handled in petri dishes and incubators by EPA-approved fetobusinesses - no longer will women have to ruin their BodyLuxe (TM) figures or suffer through nine months of backaches and nausea - and worst of all, stretch marks - just to bring a child into the world, which would be considered showing off, anyway, like Spencerian penmanship.  Food and drink will be the last things to go, but I have no doubt that somebody, somewhere is working on that very problem right now.  Soon, Big Business will be competing to supply all your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories - the very coolest, it's guaranteed - bundled with your other entertainment services for one low monthly fee, of course.  Your Head Trucker predicts that Fox News Corp. will be one of the very first to cash in on the trend, followed closely by Starbucks, Wally World, and the editors of Vogue (platinum cardholders only).  Books and wisdom - which is a vastly different thing from mere knowledge - and truly independent reflection on topics the crowd has never heard of, doesn't want to hear about, will become as ridiculous and superfluous and granny-like as incandescent lightbulbs.  Why spend precious whole minutes of your life reading a book, when you can download a hundred books to your BFD (brain flash drive) in milliseconds?

And won't that be grand?  Never again will you have to struggle with being literate, poor baby, or knowing on your own anything truly worthwhile, or ever have to sob silently in your room, disgraced over a remark or a thought that was rad hip 20 minutes ago but now marks you as laughably out of sync with the worldflow.  Not merely will your ThoughtBank (TM) - all copyrighted by a major corporation, of course, just like Mickey Mouse and Spiderman - be instantly available over the SuperNet and continuously updated, but in fact your entire personality will be provided for you, with a generous choice of variations in makes and models, and new, ever more cool ones coming out every week as fast as the developers can write them.  In programming language, of course - not English, are you kidding?  That old geezer crap that went out with dial-up access and hamburgers?  Puh-lease.


One final observation.  There are some things about growing old that don't suck.  One is knowing that whatever you may think of the current follies in the world - and they are legion - nothing you do or say will stay the onrushing tide.  And once having accepted that, when your brief candle flickers low you can at least retire with a clear conscience - not copyrighted, not trademarked, but your own.


A World I Never Made from Rachel Kwak on Vimeo.



Video via Andrew Sullivan.