[paigetheoracle]

In tribal groups, knowledge is passed on by word of mouth but most if not all civilizations use writing. Therefore could illiteracy and disinterest in science be a sign of the imminent collapse of say ours? Most biblical prophecies etc. produce all kinds of signs for the end times, which rarely come to pass. Could this be a simple litmus test for where ancient civilizations disappeared to and why i.e. simply went back to the land or a simpler form of life?

[CraigD]

Catch title, “Is Illiteracy A Sign Of The End Times?”, but the phrase “end times” is usually associated with a religious concept, so I think we’d do well to not use it here.

paigetheoracle, on 24 January 2012 - 08:57 AM, said:

In tribal groups, knowledge is passed on by word of mouth but most if not all civilizations use writing.

I agree that writing is an essential feature of human civilization. Though “history” is not exactly synonymous with “civilization”, the concepts are related, and by definition, until a culture has writing, it’s pre-historic. Since the beginning of history, about 10,000 years ago, humans have stored information by writing.

Quote

Therefore could illiteracy and disinterest in science be a sign of the imminent collapse of say ours? Most biblical prophecies etc. produce all kinds of signs for the end times, which rarely come to pass. Could this be a simple litmus test for where ancient civilizations disappeared to and why i.e. simply went back to the land or a simpler form of life?

I don’t think so.

Historically, there have always been some people who could read and write, but until recently (the last few centuries), the large majority of people could not. High (80%+) literacy rates are largely due to mandatory government-provided education, which in turn is due to the conclusion, correct IMHO, that literacy is necessary for people to have jobs that allow them to avoid poverty.

I don’t think our present-day civilization would disappear, however, if literacy rates dramatically declined to, say, less than 25%. There would just be a stronger class division between the minority of people who could read and the majority who could not, similar to the division between clergy and laypeople that existed in medieval Europe. Life for most people would be worse, I think, but civilization would still exist.

As for going back to the land/a simpler life, I doubt this will happen, because the economic forces that influence what sort of life most people have are unlikely to favor this. It’s hard to make money from subsistence farmers, easier to make it from urban laborers. A world-wide “back to the land” change in civilization would, I think, require tremendous intentional planning, and a political revolution that I don’t think any movement or leader is capable of generating. The occasional ones that have try over the past few centuries haven’t done very well.

[MacPhee]

paigetheoracle, on 24 January 2012 - 08:57 AM, said:

In tribal groups, knowledge is passed on by word of mouth but most if not all civilizations use writing. Therefore could illiteracy and disinterest in science be a sign of the imminent collapse of say ours? Most biblical prophecies etc. produce all kinds of signs for the end times, which rarely come to pass. Could this be a simple litmus test for where ancient civilizations disappeared to and why i.e. simply went back to the land or a simpler form of life?

Illiteracy means not having the ability to read or write.

Why should we particularly value this ability? It just means writing spoken things down, then reading them. Using a primitive method of recording - written or printed text. The text records the speech. This method of recording was a tremendous advance in its day.

But nowadays, better methods are available. Modern devices such as tape recorders and DVD recorders. These can record speech much better than print. Because they can capture not just the bare meaning of the words, but significant overtones. Like how the words were spoken - what tone of voice the speaker used. And what expression was on the speaker's face when the words were uttered.

Mere print, and writing, can't convey these nuances. So I wonder whether we aren't attaching too much importance to "literacy" in the modern world?

[7DSUSYstrings]

paigetheoracle, on 24 January 2012 - 08:57 AM, said:

In tribal groups, knowledge is passed on by word of mouth but most if not all civilizations use writing. Therefore could illiteracy and disinterest in science be a sign of the imminent collapse of say ours? Most biblical prophecies etc. produce all kinds of signs for the end times, which rarely come to pass. Could this be a simple litmus test for where ancient civilizations disappeared to and why i.e. simply went back to the land or a simpler form of life?

I would think, especially with the presence of the net, literacy is improving. It may be that this bee hive of data, that can only be accessed for most by writing, is forcing the tribal philosophy to learn or desist. Regarding the Bible, as the example, the end times are signified by increases in both knowledge and lifespan. We are seeing both, but this could also be seen as necessity being the modus primatum of intellectual spawn and could be predicted scientifically more than by divine revelation.

[Qfwfq]

Some movies are a work of art and they can include music too. In some cases though, the book a movie is based on remains far better. There are cases where the movie is at least as excellent as the book, take for instance Truffaut's movie version of Bradbury's Farenheit 451. Ironically, that story is about authorities destroying culture by burning books and, in Truffaut's film, one sees no text except the incriminated books; lawful things only have numbers, icons and photos.

MacPhee, on 28 March 2012 - 07:03 AM, said:

Mere print, and writing, can't convey these nuances. So I wonder whether we aren't attaching too much importance to "literacy" in the modern world?

Great idea, why do computers still have a keyboard? It would be redundant if all software totally replaced text with voice. We could post our actual voices on forums like this, instead of typing on keyboards. But wait, yeah, even the text languages software is composed of would have to be replaced. The whole world of software could become audiovisual without any text. Instead of scanning through menus, lists or tables, the user selects each graphic element and the voice begins to recite the associated words...

The idea of using such a computer uncannily reminds me of Truffaut's movie and I also think it would be somewhat clumsy with no text at all.

This post has been edited by Qfwfq: 29 March 2012 - 09:29 AM
Reason for edit: ooops!

[MacPhee]

Qfwfq, on 29 March 2012 - 09:28 AM, said:

There are cases where the movie is at least as excellent as the book, take for instance Truffaut's movie version of Bradbury's Farenheit 451.

Do you really think the movie is as good as the book? The book is rich with thought. But all I remember from the movie, is the big coarsely-lined low-definition B/W TV screen in Montag's home. A poor effort at reproducing the book's giant wall-sized colour TV! And the mono-rail. Wasn't this was put into the film, because they had an experimental monorail in France. And Truffaut thought it looked "futuristic". Actually, it just makes the movie look very dated.

But I agree, some films can be as excellent as, or even transcend, the book. For example, Neville Shute's "On The Beach". The printed book is rather pedestrian. You can read it in a kind of detached, unemotional way. But can you watch the film, with its haunting "Waltzing Matilda" theme music, without your heart being tugged, and tears welling to your eyes?

Doesn't that show that print is, at least in some ways, an inferior medium?

[Eclogite]

One can read much faster than one can listen. Once can 'scroll' back to a piece of text much faster than one can relocate an audio discussion.

A mark of literacy in this world and into the future will be the ability to funtcion effectively in a variety of medias and formats, choosing the one most apposite for the occassion.

[MacPhee]

Eclogite, on 02 April 2012 - 01:15 AM, said:

One can read much faster than one can listen. Once can 'scroll' back to a piece of text much faster than one can relocate an audio discussion.

That's true. Consider the "audio" versions of books - recorded on tape, for the benefit of blind persons. These audio recordings, go on for hours and hours. Perhaps for 20 hours, even in the case of quite a short book. Which could be read in much less time, by a sighted person viewing the printed text.

Printed text does take a long time to read out loud. It can be read in one's head much faster. So fast, that I often read Stephen King's "The Stand", all 1000+ pages of it (uncut edition), in less than 36 hours. If I had to read it aloud, how long would that take - nearly a week?

[HydrogenBond]

If you are curious about something, you might do research. If you could not read, but are still curious, you will need seek out others who know about that topic, or you would need to invent an explanation on your own based on inference. This suggests a movement back toward smaller community interaction, and self reliance, and away from the detachment of private reading and uniformity of collective reading. If you like fiction but are not able to read, you might look for the local story teller. If you are more self reliant you may need to day dream more and come up with your own story line. The world becomes a smaller piece, but more intimate. However, the truth becomes relative, instead of universal.

What I see happening is a shift away from broad scale consensus, to smaller scale relative consensus, with more variety. In other words, rather than have everyone read and learn the same thing, illiteracy would mean more variety, because the needed information is reduced to the community group or the individual.

This seems to be an artifact of liberalism, which likes to psychologically differentiate the traditional unity of cultures, like America, into sub-groups based on sex, race, color, class, etc,. This is how they differentiate their base. Illiteracy would take that to the next level. They are in charge of education.

For example, why bother reading classical literature, if it was written by a white, male, anglo saxon, homophobe. Instead wouldn't it better to learn only the narrow traditions of a differntiated niche, which may not be well represented in the literary world? If that dissociation niche lacks a significant data base, community word of mouth is sufficient.

In America, it is PC taboo to like America in an outward display that represents the entire country (wave the flag) since it might hurt the feelings of a narrowed dissociation. This same liberal crowd controls the public education system and works hard to remove anything that unites the students to the biggest pictures. That taboo is throwing out the baby (reading) with the bathwater, since smaller niches may not be well represented in books.

If you read a wide range of things, couldn't that create risk of voiding dissociation propaganda? If you reduce to only word of mouth, could propaganda last longer. The TV media tends to be more liberal biased and has more control over the mind, which is good for pitching products. This product pitch, in turn, becomes familiar and can then help the snake oil salesmen, whom the illiterate depend on for information. It is a good scam but I prefer people read, be exposed to more information and be able to think on their own. That means looking for the best of the best among all the groups and not just depend on snake oil for your relative information.

This post has been edited by HydrogenBond: 08 April 2012 - 06:40 AM