this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
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Most people are illiterate. Literacy is a skill with levels and most people don't actually ever reach the level required to be a fully functional person.
This meme is a great example. Most people don't actually reach Ogre's level of literacy. Yeah, it's played for laughs in the fact that Ogre is smarter than the average human, but Ogre is also completely correct about the level of literacy we should expect of people, in a perfect world.
A lot about this is, in my opinion, misleading.
I don't need to be able to read Ulysses and understand all the themes and the deeper meanings, to be literate. As to actually understand all the meanings, I would have to be familiar with the culture in which it was written and the personal perspective of the author on that culture.
I don't think the perfect world entails that everyone (or, at least most people) is overly familiar with ancient cultures and authors.
Unfamiliarity with the context of what was written is usually why people don't catch on themes. A person with german cultural background will not read a passage about bringing honor to your bloodline, in the same way a chinese person will. A lot of Germans are deeply suspicious of the idea of honor. I learned that after decades with Germans and their culture.
How many Cultures are you familiar enough with to be able to correctly understand a text written in it?
E.g. the "remorse of conscience" is a cultural theme. A person who reads a lot of books and seek out these themes, has a different culture than a person who only scrolls on TikTok. And if the person reading books isn't on TikTok, they are probably unable to properly understand the themes in a TikTok.
And yes, you said that there are different levels of literacy, so you didn't say that I was illiterate if I wouldn't catch on the "remorse". But you present literacy as a 1 dimensional scale. 1 level, 2, 3, etc... When it is not, your ability to correctly parse a text is not 1 dimensional. You will probably fail to correctly understand a story written in ancient china, and if you understand it, you will probably fail to understand a story written in the 1950s in Germany.
Get off the horse. Stand next to us and enjoy your pleasure of reading with other people and learn different perspectives. They aren't less literate than you, they are differently literate than you.
Most people can't understand the themes of works from their own culture. How many American conservatives think the Matrix supports their ideas, and brag about taking the "red pill", not realising it's an estrogen pill? How many people watch Rick and Morty, and proceed to idolise Rick? Or the same with Sherlock, or House? How many people think Thanos did nothing wrong?
So much of our popular media criticises the flaws inherent in capitalism. Iron Man does it. Star Wars does it. Why don't we live in a society of socialists? When Starship Troopers was first released, it bombed. Because most people couldn't tell it was satire. It took years for people to catch on.
Hell, most christians read the Bible and think Jesus was white! It is literally their religious identity, and they can't be bothered to understand it.
Drag doesn't think literacy is one dimensional. But drag does think that most people don't meet the standard for being a functional person in any culture. If most people were literate, then most of the kids who grew up watching Captain Planet would be vegan and carfree. But they aren't, because they fundamentally don't understand how to think about the entertainment media they consume.
And by the way, it's a high dragon, not a horse.
I agree with you about most people not understanding their social structural sorroundings sufficiently to lead their (collective) lives in a souvereign way.
But this is not a primarily cognitive problem. Just as much it is rooted in the social structure itself. One must take into account: Which opportunities does a given act of thinking and understanding provide an individual?
In an individualized and individualizing political, ecological, cultural landscape, understanding things critically often is fruitless. For example to ensure social affiliation or navigate through the market specifique concepts, notions and sorts of "truth" are productive. Analyzing your culture to find collective paths of historic development require different scopes.
Praxeology might be a notion you could enjoy exploring.
IMO this is important if you want both, get of the high horse and fly the mighty dragon of critique.
Drag agrees, society is to blame for the way people are.
But, people are also to blame for the way society is. It's a vicious chicken.
Therefore, we need to educate people, like by telling them there's more to literacy than knowing to to read something literally.