literacy crisis but i’m being mean about it

not really but. kind of lol

everybody talks about the literacy crisis from a systemic standpoint, which i don’t disagree with at all. but i think it can also be a little more nuanced than that.

growing up in a deep red state with terrible public education, i understand how our systems have been designed purposefully since the 1980s to make quality + higher education prohibitively expensive in order to keep the majority of the public uninformed and easily influenceable by those in power. this is factual historical knowledge about the US everybody can agree on. unfortunately in this country even though we have iphones and tvs we live in a dystopic surveillance state and are treated more like unruly animals than human beings. the whole “america is a 3rd world country with a gucci belt on” saying really is true. so when we consider any sort of crisis around public education we have to consider the fact that until the for-profit economy is gone and until the government actually exists to serve the people like they’re supposed to, this is going to continue. gen alpha is the first generation in american history to experience a mass decrease in literacy and the generation after is not going to do any better if they’re still “learning” under a capitalist, fascist-lead structure.

that being said. can we acknowledge there’s some degree of personal fault as well? at least for some people. a lot of people i’ve personally interacted with. maybe this is controversial but

whenever you mention enjoying reading there’s always that person who says oh yeah i used to read so much in school but i haven’t picked up a book since high school. they’re usually at least mildly embarassed about it. so you ask them why’d you stop reading? and they’ll say i have a bad attention span because i use social media too much, i don’t have the time or the energy or the money, i don’t have an imagination anymore as an adult so i don’t enjoy them the same. 

some people genuinely do not have the time or energy and that’s fine, that’s understandable, but 99% of the folks who say this to me absolutely do have the time. they just spend it playing video games or scrolling social media instead. and those things are fine in moderation but i feel like reading is a very crucial skill and a big part of being an informed citizen, especially when public education is so bad here you’re not learning anything unless you’re learning it on your own. practically everything i know about world history i know from reading books, not from the propaganda slop i was fed in high school. i feel like when you live in a world like this reading is not something that should feel optional. if you have the time to read a book or two a month, do it. even if it’s a fiction book you learn how to empathize and interact with different kinds of people, how to or not to handle various situations—there’s a lot you can learn from stories.

(not going too into it but. money is not an obstacle to reading in this modern age. that’s just a bullshit excuse ngl. there are soooo many different free stories and resources available, not only online but in libraries and other institutions for those who don’t have the privilege of an at-home internet connection either. and uh.. 🏴‍☠️. i’ve read about 200 books in the last year and paid for maybe 3 of them).

when people say they “don’t have the energy” to read what they really mean is that they don’t feel up to focusing on a quiet, solitary task for a long period of time because they’re brainrotted by consistent dopamine sources like their phones/video games. they DO have the energy but not the willpower or motivation to spend it without the promise of instant gratification or temporary escape from their thoughts/personal existence. because when you read a book it’s just you and the story, sitting there quietly while you absorb it, while you think. a lot of people just don’t want to think. they can’t stand sitting with their thoughts. i say all this like i’m not the same way sometimes—but i’m putting in effort not to be, to pull myself away from the dopamine hits. i get that it’s hard but fuck, guys, we need to cultivate our knowledge and empathy to live.

and then with the imagination thing it’s like—ok no wonder you don’t have it anymore, when was the last time you were bored for a while and had to entertain yourself with your mind? i do it all the time because i’m part of a system, half of my life happens in my brain and when i’m out in the world i see mental images regularly. imagination is like any other skill, like a muscle, you have to use it to not just build up but maintain it as well. and if you’re trying to rebuild a skill you’ve let atrophy, start small. believe it or not there are beginner exercises for building your imagination available online. anything you want to do is in your grasp if you only reach for it.

that’s another thing. everybody is so deeply anti-intellectual and completely unmotivated & incurious. if you mention a fact or interesting statistic you read in a book you get groans and eye rolls. some people i know trust anonymous twitter threads and random tiktok videos more than they trust a book about a specific scientific subject written by researchers who’ve dedicated decades of their lives studying it. and people are not curious whatsoever. they just don’t care about learning anything, don’t prioritize it, don’t see any value in it really, because if they can work and have their homes and families that’s all that matters. what about everything else? what about the world outside of you? doesn’t anyone want to know anything? doesn’t anyone want to learn anything about each other? 

that’s just it. they truly don’t

i don’t know if we’re going to be able to solve all of this without dismantling the capitalist system, yes, but also putting the onus on people to become interested in learning and sharing knowledge again. i’ve stopped talking to friends before because the only things they’re interested in is jokes and memes and games, which is all fine but, fuck, there’s so much more to life that they’re missing. they don’t have basic beginner 101 information about politics but they’re voting. idk sometimes it feels like almost everyone around me is a zombie just shuffling through life and the daily grind of suffering without caring anything about themselves or their futures and not reading is a large part of that. whenever i talk about reading they jump to making excuses for themselves and it makes me talk about my hobbies a lot less. the world is endlessly frustrating when you’re wired to be a social animal