Martin Hähnel

The Post-Literate Society

Published:
Tags:

Probably the forcefullest[1] reading crisis argument I've seen so far: James Mariotts' "The dawn of the post-literate society" which he published on his Substack.[2] Presented with a lot of fervour and not a lot of hope at the same time (no wonder, living trough the fatalistic turn).

Just as the advent of print dealt the final death blow to the decaying world of feudalism, so the screen is destroying the world of liberal democracy.

As tech companies wipe out literacy and middle class jobs, we may find ourselves a second feudal age. Or it may be that we are entering a political era beyond our imagining.

Whatever happens, we are already seeing the world we once knew melt away. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Welcome to the post-literate society.

I will say that the skeptical (of the reading crisis) article I linked a couple of days ago is a little incomplete and a little too happy to omit a couple of things. I commented it like this:

He makes great points about the power of the written word and why a minuscule to moderate decline in reading is nothing too worrying, actually. [...] I think this all rings true. But I can also tell by looking at my own reading situation that I am personally at a cross roads and have actually read less and less over time (especially books).

I think I might've been a little too generous. Because reading Mariotts' text - emotional and maybe not so super even-keeled as it may be - really gets at a core problem that handwaving will not solve. I think Mastroianni's[3] the reading crisis is overblown article is not denying the fact that there is a moderate (so far) decline in reading (ability and volume) and I think his main point is more that a post-literate society is not likely but that some parts (I would argue big parts) of society will not be literate in the sense that they take part in reading/writing culture. He doesn't state it super obviously, but I think this quote points to it:

Being ignorant of the forces shaping society does not exempt you from their influence—it places you at their mercy.

And I think a lot more people will be at the mercy of the few literate people that are in power or employed by power. I imagine there will be other literate people, too. Some more some less literate, so I agree that not all of us will lose the hunger for learning/reading/writing/thinking/argueing. But these pockets of literacy in an otherwise post-literate world will probably not do a lot to safe democracy/science/humanities. Sure, us few can enjoy books (even novels), but it might not move the needle in public discourse. And I think here is where do see a darker future than Mastroianni who seems to be happy with the fact that his small community of readers is literate and that the decline is just moderate (so far).

I think it is also slightly short sighted to claim a moderate decline as the biggest literacy problem seems to be in the younger generations. So older "pre-post-literates" may skew the situation. What makes me hopeful is this:

Fact #1: there are signs that the digital invasion of our attention is beginning to stall. We seem to have passed peak social media—time spent on the apps has started to slide. App developers are finding it harder and harder to squeeze more attention out of our eyeballs, and it turns out that having your eyeballs squeezed hurts, so people aren’t sticking around for it. The “draw people in” phase of the internet was unsurprisingly a lot more enticing than the “shake ‘em down” phase—what we now refer to, appropriately, as “enshittification”.

This is true. And yet, even though this does make me hopeful, I also gotta admit that my immediate thought here is "Who is we". I do believe the "peak social media" line somewhat for us Millenials (and maybe even older people), but I am less sure this holds true for people not having lived through (and participated in) more enjoyable social media times. If you've never known other (mainstream!) options and vibes around social media (I include blogs here, too), or even if you've only heard about them oral history style (in a podcast or something), you might not know what you've missed. And realizing that while short-form video is taking away your ability to making (or following) a longer literate culture argument[4] may lead you down to the "eternal present" problem that Mariott is talking about:

Our culture is being transformed into a smartphone wasteland.

Cut off from the cultural riches of the past we are condemned to live in a narcissistic eternal present. Deprived of the critical tools to question and develop the insights of those who went before us, we are condemned to endlessly repeat and pastiche ourselves, superhero film by superhero film, repetitive pop song by repetitive pop song.

I guess what I'm saying is that this somewhat apocalyptic article really resonated strongly with me and that I wish people would take the 15-20 minutes time to read this and ask themselves if they don't want to be at least one of the few proud literate folk remaining, even if democracy is somewhat fucked. We can still stand up for what is right and still try to challenge ourselves to grow. I know I want this for myself.

  1. Is that a word? ↩︎

  2. It pains me that seemingly a lot of longer interesting arguments (at least from the US) are made on Substack and so I keep linking there, even though it is kind of like a nazi bar. ↩︎

  3. that's the other guy ↩︎

  4. Although I am certain that believing nothing critical, creative or interesting is going on in people steeped in this kind of media is also naive... ↩︎