Thoughts on Universal Literacy

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As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand. -- Ernest Hemingway

It should be obvious that one of the greatest achievements in modern times is to make the ability to read and write accessible to the masses. That would not only make written communication more accessible, but also give countless people the "privilege" to express their voices to practically anyone in the world.

My assumption about the largely-pre-literate world of the past is, since we do not have access to those who were not able to write, we may romanticize history without seeing the full picture.

Surely, in ancient Greece and in any other period that had an intellectual prosperity before modern times, there were countless intellectual giants, some of whom revolutionized the world.

However, we must not forget the possible fact that there were likely to be a lot of fools and idiots, just like we had in any other era, and the reason some of us are not aware of their existence is because they couldn't write.

Who is to say there were not dumb forums in the far past as there are today, and trolls and any other kind of jerk? The main different between each version of each time is that, today's jerk has a keyboard, or even a video-editing software, and he is capable of reaching the entire world if he was so lucky in their viewership endeavours.

The literacy of the "masses" was seen with Nietzsche's disapproval. As you can read about in this post of an old blog. The fact that the ability to read and write became more and more available to the "ordinary folk", would entail that there would be a significant decrease both in the reading of classics and in the quality of writing as well.

Nietzsche felt that universal literacy would impact the quality of writing, cause more equality among people and effect a general dumbing down of society.  He foresaw a general corruption of good literature and therefore the end of reasonable thinking

While I agree that the quality of writing has decreased ever since then, we should not avoid the fact that nowadays, with enough practice, theoretically anyone who knows how to write can become a competent, if not decent, writer.

Rather than pointing the finger at the "herds" or the "sheeple" for making much of today's literal content shallower than ever, we shouldn't ignore the logical conclusion that there might be, or even will be, more intellectuals and thinkers than at any time in human history.

Anyone with enough access to public education can learn how to channel their thoughts and ideas significantly more competently. With the rise of the internet, people can educate themselves about things they would otherwise not be able to learn without, assuming academics are not an option.

Due to this exact reason of accessibility and freedom of information, I think that there is both a decrease and an increase in intellectual prosperity in our contemporary times.

• There is an increase in online contemporary intellectuals.

• On the other hand, the "Brainrot" phenomenon decreases intellectual prosperity.

What if universal literacy was achieved far before the Industrial Revolution? Surely there will be a decrease in quality content even in that alternative reality. However, that does not alter the fact that that decrease is inevitable if our plan is to make more people literate, and that is not due to a lack of education, but simply because stupidity was, is, (and probably will be) an unseparated part in the history of humanity.

To quote Albert Einstein:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.

On the other hand, thanks to to universal literacy, one of the blessings it can give is, us is anyone's potential to become a recorded philosopher, unless someone else will do the writing for you, like Plato did to Socrates. If it weren't for Plato's teachings, we might as well have never heard about the person who became the father of western philosophy.

Just imagine how many philosophers there were before modern times, that we never got to hear about their existence just because they were illiterate; how many storytellers, singers, playwrights, and so on.

Universal Literacy, therefore, will merely amplify in human memory what is already there:

• Highly competent intellectuals.

• And highly shallow people.