I
call our world post-literate because, although most of us can read and write,
the dopamine zap of visual images is obliterating our capacity for complex
thought.
Instead
of reading, we watch: videos, films, selfies, panoramic phone shots of wherever
we or our friends happen to be. We smile at close-ups of our cats, our dogs. We
indulge the latest heartstring tweak of manufactured sentiment.
It’s
all so easy and quick.
Songs—even
the best songs—are easy to understand, compared with poetry. The music helps
the lyrics land with force and, sometimes, stick.
Literature,
however, is hard. Literature requires effort from the reader, and mental effort
is difficult. Few are willing to try. A lot of us tasted Ethan Frome in high school and declared, “nevermore.”
That’s
one reason literature has become associated with elitist intellectuals, in
opposition to which the Nobel Prize committee chose an icon of pop culture.
Our
society embraces the easy emotions of pop culture, even when it includes social
criticism. Set to music, the flattest, most awkward lyrics can energize,
manipulate the mood.
Poets,
though, spend their lives struggling to express human complexity in words alone.
Mostly without monetary reward, they evoke the heights and depths of the human
experience. And although Dylan’s words, free of music, can qualify as a kind of
poetry, they are in no way close to the highest literary achievement.
We
can dissolve this reality into the post-literate brain-soup of our personal “likes”,
but the standard remains.
The
fact is, we need standards of excellence. We have a soul-need for goals to
yearn toward, to admire in bald stupefaction when others attain them. That need
isn’t merely a desire for entertainment and distraction, the easy fixes of our
time. Songwriters require a Dylan to rise toward; poets need a Heaney, or
Brodsky.
Standards
motivate. Without them, why run a marathon when 5k will do? Why do baseball teams dream of beating the
Yankees? Where sports are concerned, the reality is obvious. Young men will
brain themselves for a Super Bowl ring.
In
the world of words, however, standards are under siege.
Yes,
we are reading, but what are we reading? Texts from friends. Bloviating blogs,
in dire need of editing. Headlines designed to juice us up. And when we click
through, we find that the headline was a come-on, failing to fulfill its
promise of outrage, or titillation. But the damage has been done. We will
remember the come-on, and the disappointing content will become another cup of
brain soup.
Advertising
is becoming our nation’s great creative achievement. From the moment we get up
until we turn out the light at night, we’re being sold something. From the
cereal box to the toothpaste container to the medicine we take.
We
can no longer tell the difference between life and selling. Heck, we no longer
even notice.
We’re
sold politics just like acid reducers. You and I are sliced and diced into
categories of remarkable specificity via data mining. Ever finer differences
between us are isolated and bombarded. “Targeted,” is the word, for good
reason.
We
no longer know how to dig past the surface of a sales pitch for product or
candidate to understand the bias, or the agenda, that squeezed it forth. We
latch onto conspiracy theories invented by people we hope are seeing more
deeply, more truly. We can’t even see through that.
Because
the post-literate mind looks for the easy thing to understand. The generality.
The simplified answer. It celebrates that Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature. It accepts that Donald Trump is running for president. It
ignores how the vulgarity of celebrity culture spills off the tabloid racks
into our living rooms, into our election dialogue, sullying our children’s
innocence.
Celebrity
culture is so easy.
The
culture of excellence rewards the effort it requires. The Nobel is awarded to
elite physicists, biologists, doctors, and so on. The concept of an elite in
the sciences is fine. It is only in the language of words which everyone uses
to some extent (so much easier than math, after all) that elitism is sneered
at.
Definitely,
the path to greatness should be open to all talent, but the pinnacle must be
there to strive toward.
The
way we’re going in this post-literate society is to lop off the pinnacle, lower
the standard, give everybody the award.
Render
human striving meaningless.
