Good books enrich human experience and carry sophisticated enlightening thoughts consolidated across time and space. Best minds don’t die they live among us through their writings, their ideas and thoughts. And now, all the evidences suggests that, we have entered a ‘post literate’ society where people suffer from short attention span, they don’t have time to read, to understand. Youngsters are finding it difficult to comprehend complex thoughts. I was reading an article online 'The dawn of post literate society' (by James Marriot) on the seriousness of this issue. I do spend substantial time in reading, even when online, but realize that sometimes I fall into ‘doom scrolling’ without realizing. I see most people hooked to phone screen but didn’t realize that situation is now serious that warrants drastic actions, atleast impressionable growing minds (below 14 years) shouldn’t have access to smart phones.
Humanity’s progress is very much hinged to spread of knowledge through writing that percolated after invention of printing press, books became common place and led to tremendous progress and consolidation of knowledge. Awareness fueled values of argumentation, systemic thinking and cogent thoughts among common populace that led to rapid progress (historian Orlando Figes notes that the English, French and Russian revolutions all occurred in societies approaching fifty per cent literacy). Books were valued atleast until two decades back. Enter smart phone and there is a collapse. The situation has become dire. In West, studies show a decline of as much as 40%, in last two decades! Imagine the situation in other parts of the world. This is watershed moment in history with serious repercussions coinciding with immense challenges that needs deeper awareness, understanding and collective action. There is a perfect storm building up and likes of Trump are warnings of much deeper crisis. The new technology is not evolving to attract us into sophisticated forms of reading and understanding or spreading knowledge. Instead, its aims to distract and keep our attention on inanities. Imagine being cut from best of thoughts and ideas so that you can grow and progress and contribute to human understanding factoring contemporary reality, questioning and refining it. It is as if humanity is being scythed from all sources of understanding. Mind deprived of nourishment and incapacitated to think. We are rightly worried about AI but something significant is being lost at an alarming rate. A generation is growing up as functional illiterates with decreased attention and reduced cognitive ability while grownups have voluntarily stalled their literacy to be credulous medieval peasants. This is post literate society, a collection of diminished human potential that imitate preliterate society in its irrationality and primal urges. It effortlessly moves towards easy emotion satisfying certainties of authoritarian values and feudal concerns. Smart phone is doing what barbarians and marauding invaders destroying libraries did centuries back as they decimate civilization. It has started to have devastating consequences.
We are rightly concerned about books being censored but
not seems to be concerned about best books not being read and enlightening ideas
not discussed. We are already primed for misinformation and disinformation
unless drastic steps are taken to introduce best thoughts and enlightening ideas, and more spaces for people to gather to talk or sit quietly and
prohibits smart phones to experience boredom. Responsible societies must take action. Loss of reading
is not loss to humanity but loss of humanity. We collapse without the understanding
of what defines and sustains we as human, the progress and awareness of complexity
of our reality. There are clear indications that intellectual threshold of societies
are collapsing with impoverished human experience. Without thinking mind humans
are nothing but apes (democracy assures framework for equality, liberty and
freedom, hence possibility of progress that doesn’t really make people equal -there is an effort needed to be aware). Barbarians
with short attention that evaluates every complexity into simplistic binaries
of dopamine saturated cave minds placed in modern setting that it will soon ransack
into nothing. The tragedy compounded as most are incapacitated to even
understand the significance of what is being lost. A world of shallow people
scrolling, repeating, scrolling to ‘smartphone wasteland’.
**
