The End of One of the West’s Grand Narratives
The capstone of Western civilization? I don’t know. Perhaps high literacy rates and education levels. If that is the case, then that capstone now also serves as the tombstone of Western civilization.
High literacy levels and the subsequent surge in university degrees have created societies that have largely abandoned authentic thinking and creativity.
Only a fraction of people in the West could read and write a mere five or six centuries ago. Some historians put it at about 15 to 20%. One or two in ten.
That is where one of the West’s narratives starts. The drive to educate the masses. Gutenberg’s printing press. Bibles printed in the vernacular. The gradual affordability of books and the development of education as a systemized industry. Mass enculturation. The nurturing and refinement of the unwashed, coupled with the enhancement and polishing of the immaculately bathed. Noble sentiments propelling it all.
Literacy rates were above 90% in most Western countries by the 19th century and reached “full” literacy by the 20th century. The Grand Narrative bore much fruit in the form of inventions, developments, innovations, growth, expansion, ideas, research, and geniuses. So many geniuses.
Written knowledge used to be so scarce, inaccessible, and unaffordable. The Grand Literacy Narrative chronicles precisely that historical scarcity, inaccessibility, and unaffordability. When knowledge is ubiquitous, accessible, and affordable, civilization will flourish. And it did. For many centuries.
How odd that the Grand Narrative now appears to have run its course. How strange that a civilization brimming with readers and writers is now turning its back on reading and writing. Sure, people do still read, but what are they reading? Yes, people can still write, but what are they writing? Moreover, how many will choose to have AI write something for them rather than write it themselves? How many educated people qualify as knowledgeable? How many geniuses does the West now produce?
I suspect the motivations to expand knowledge in the various forms of secondary thinking—written, visual, symbolic—were good initially; good in the sense that they were rooted in spiritual aims. Perhaps the hope was that expanded secondary thinking would help fortify and expand primary thinking, leading to greater direct knowledge, particularly in religion, specifically, Christianity.
Maybe such hopes did manifest in specific times and places, but it would be a stretch to claim that any motivations to expand knowledge in secondary thinking are rooted in good spiritual aims today. Ironically, the expansion of secondary thinking knowledge has weakened primary thinking and all but obliterated direct knowledge.
The Grand Narrative continues, but as a civilization, the West appears to have lost the plot...completely.
High literacy levels and the subsequent surge in university degrees have created societies that have largely abandoned authentic thinking and creativity.
Only a fraction of people in the West could read and write a mere five or six centuries ago. Some historians put it at about 15 to 20%. One or two in ten.
That is where one of the West’s narratives starts. The drive to educate the masses. Gutenberg’s printing press. Bibles printed in the vernacular. The gradual affordability of books and the development of education as a systemized industry. Mass enculturation. The nurturing and refinement of the unwashed, coupled with the enhancement and polishing of the immaculately bathed. Noble sentiments propelling it all.
Literacy rates were above 90% in most Western countries by the 19th century and reached “full” literacy by the 20th century. The Grand Narrative bore much fruit in the form of inventions, developments, innovations, growth, expansion, ideas, research, and geniuses. So many geniuses.
Written knowledge used to be so scarce, inaccessible, and unaffordable. The Grand Literacy Narrative chronicles precisely that historical scarcity, inaccessibility, and unaffordability. When knowledge is ubiquitous, accessible, and affordable, civilization will flourish. And it did. For many centuries.
How odd that the Grand Narrative now appears to have run its course. How strange that a civilization brimming with readers and writers is now turning its back on reading and writing. Sure, people do still read, but what are they reading? Yes, people can still write, but what are they writing? Moreover, how many will choose to have AI write something for them rather than write it themselves? How many educated people qualify as knowledgeable? How many geniuses does the West now produce?
I suspect the motivations to expand knowledge in the various forms of secondary thinking—written, visual, symbolic—were good initially; good in the sense that they were rooted in spiritual aims. Perhaps the hope was that expanded secondary thinking would help fortify and expand primary thinking, leading to greater direct knowledge, particularly in religion, specifically, Christianity.
Maybe such hopes did manifest in specific times and places, but it would be a stretch to claim that any motivations to expand knowledge in secondary thinking are rooted in good spiritual aims today. Ironically, the expansion of secondary thinking knowledge has weakened primary thinking and all but obliterated direct knowledge.
The Grand Narrative continues, but as a civilization, the West appears to have lost the plot...completely.
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