You First

Over the course of the past few months, I've noticed some alarming acts of grammatical blasphemy: "me and Joe", "I and Maria", "me and you", etc.. What struck me most about this is the idea of putting me/I/myself first. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but it strikes me as a selfish mental shift, one in which others come second and the speaker always comes first.

In grade school, we were taught grammatical structure with this basic rule of thumb: other people come first, and you come last. It's an altruistic mentality, one wrapped into something so basic as the way in which we speak. It is horrifying, then, to think that it is becoming increasingly acceptable to look out for "Number One". If language is a sign of the times, then we are truly becoming egocentric and slovenly, with short attention spans to boot.

Many have capitalized on this, turning writing from an art form to a cold, impersonal, but efficient means of communication. Undoubtedly, this form does have its place — user manuals and scientific journal articles, for instance — but seeing it in novels and the like has been nothing short of depressing. Character development has been sacrificed for fast-moving plots for an increasingly desensitized readership. Personally, it seems as if one must maintain that breakneck pace, or else said readers may discover that there is no substance to these imaginary people, and as such, we really don't care what happens to them.

It occurs to me that this attitude may be cynical at best, and excessively critical at worst. Still, it's hard to deny when I see book reviews denouncing Orwell's 1984 as boring and pointless, while touting Da Vinci Code as a classic. (This was a real book review written by a teenager. Yes, we all read 1984 in high school, but I don't remember commentary on socialism being quite so dull.) In any case, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for an upswing in literary appreciation and selfless thought. Goodness knows we need it.