Is the current generation the most literary ever?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


It's about porn.

[realpolitic]

Yes and no.... is the only correct answer. Today's technology has given people so many choices, that kids no longer just have a few, ie college, TV, herion, but have many more. The population has become increasingly bifurcated. It's easier than ever to be stupid or smart. If one kept IQ graphs constant (the aren't, they're regualarly renomalised so avg=100 and Standard deviation =15), one would see an increaingly wider graph.

[SlowwHand]

I don't think that the majority of the current generation can add nor subtract two figures in their head.

[GePap]

NO. Certainly kids read and write a lot of things, but the content is ****. They read and write opinions, not works of literature, or poetry, or fact-filled pieces that educate them in some way.

At most you can claim that the type of literacy that allows one individual to converse with another with some basis of shared images and ideas is changing, but I would not for a second claim this last generation as more literate.

[Drogue]

Re: Is the current generation the most literary ever?

Originally posted by Oerdin
With the internet going main stream millions of kids have grown up frequenting web forums, flaming and debating over a vast array of topics, and even doing internet research to back up their points. I recall that the average kid now spends between 1-2 hours per day on the internet and they can't all just be looking at porn. This very fact adds up to lots and lots of little fingers clicking away on keyboards and reading ****loads of virtual drivel along with the occasional gem. These kids are spending 1-2 hours per day every day reading and writing. Sure, most of it isn't literary masterpieces but it most certainly is something. What do you think?

I'd disagree. Firstly because literary tends to come from literature, and that isn't what they're reading. And secondly on the skills front, reading teaches you good English only if you read good English. Reading and writing crap leads doesn't.

The current generation has the widest access to information and the most varied circle of people to talk to, which are great contributions the internet has made. However it doesn't give people English skills and doesn't constitute literature - I can already find a copy of every work of literature of note in English in my local library, so the internet hasn't affected that too much

[Victor Galis]

One might argue that what we view as the great works of literature were at one point elements of pop culture... on the otherhand, we might take the snobbish view that past culture is superior. I subscribe to the latter.

[Drogue]

I don't doubt they were popular culture, but they were popular high culture. Books were read by educated people - those who can read. If we take the top 20% of educated people in the UK, we probably find they are interested in the similar types of high culture, like modern literature.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
WTF is Eventis? (or something)

I, too, would like to know.

[LordShiva]

Another disturbing trend these days is the rise of relativism, and the idea that there is no one right answer. As a result, kids get away with writing utter drivel about how they "feel" and what they "believe."

[Lorizael]

I don't know, LordShiva, I think we can value individual qualities within relativism just as much as we value qualities of other theories.

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Another disturbing trend these days is the rise of relativism, and the idea that there is no one right answer. As a result, kids get away with writing utter drivel about how they "feel" and what they "believe."

The words broke like a thunderclap inside St. Peter's Basilica. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, addressing the world's cardinals just hours before they sequestered themselves Monday to choose the next leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics, decided to define this conclave.

"We are moving," he declared, toward "a dictatorship of relativism . . . that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure."

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Another disturbing trend these days is the rise of relativism, and the idea that there is no one right answer. As a result, kids get away with writing utter drivel about how they "feel" and what they "believe."

This is a very pernicious problem. I am absolutely sick of hearing things like "you can't treat everything with logic" or some such drivel when talking about serious issues with people. This is the standard comeback used when I've just drawn and quartered some argument of theirs which I disagree with.

Since when was "I feel...." a good argument? I don't give a flying fuck what you feel, dammit!

[aneeshm]

If you ask me, mine is probably the saddest and dumbest generation I've come across.

Maybe it's a result of growing up in the 90s, when there really wasn't any "enemy" (Cold war over, fight with Islam not really started in full force) with which there could be an ideological battle using the intellectual big guns. Maybe it's a consequence of growing up with too much political correctness.

Whatever it is, we're going to pay dearly for this.

[VetLegion]

Aneeshm you live in one of the poorest countries on Earth. How about poverty being the enemy?

[aneeshm]

It's not emotive enough. We need an enemy we can rally against. The only people who are rallying against societal problems are the Hindutva types.

And there is another problem - the wealth disparity. The middle classes and the poor are too busy bettering their lot to care too much about intellectual issues, and the elite and the rich are too decadent (and thus are miserable failures). It's people like me, on the border line (either economically or intellectually, or both), who really care, but we're in too small a minority to really make a difference - we have neither the resources nor the power.