A Post-literate society?

A Post-literate society?

This entry is meant to be a continuation on my Prestonwood thread as well as an exploration into an idea that probably isn’t unique, but at least my take on it might be.

Brief background: Laureen and I and some friends attended the 2003 Christmas Celebration at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano. Prestonwood (which goes by the nickname of “God, Inc.”) has a 7,000 seat worship center. The show itself was divided into three acts: a toy fantasy involving Santa, Frosty the snowman on roller blades, lots of dancing people, chorus lines, a precocious 5 year old, etc. The second act was apparently the high school production of an old west “gotta bring Jesus back to town” story, replete with a flying lead singer. Then there was a brief interlude of a concert with 200 or so singers. The third act was the story of Jesus from his birth through his death, resurrection, and ascension. There were angels that flew out into the audience. There were lasers, rotating gyroscopic lights, and the requisite cladding of Judas Iscariot in all black.

The thought that ran through my mind was: is entertainment the role of the church?

I talked to my minister about it and was reminded that during the middle ages, the church provided entertainment and interpretation of scripture to its parishoners, but that was because they weren’t literate. Apparently, even some of the priests weren’t.

But we’ve moved beyond those times, haven’t we? That got me thinking about the larger context of literacy and immediacy in our society. It seems that we have moved from a truly literate society into one that I’m calling post-literate: one where the ability to communicate effectively is blotted out by the number of filters and screens that we choose to put in front of us.

What I mean by that is that in the generation currently in school, there is an immediacy to everything in their lives–more people have TVs than running water in the U.S., and as such news, information, entertainment and everything is available on demand. The price that is paid for that immediacy is the acceptance of someone else’s filter — their idea of what is news (and what slant they choose to give it, either liberal, conservative, or hidden motivation) or what is important, or in the case of entertainment what is hip, hot, or cool. In my generation’s (X’s) attempt to be individual, we’ve all wound up being carbon copies of individuality, and less and less people are willing to think critically and rationally about what is presented to them.

To some extent, I feel that this move mirrors the move away from traditional manufacturing jobs toward a service economy–we have lost physical labor to something else, and what I fear is that slowly over time we’re going to lose the ability to intellectually labor to something scary. And when that happens, it will be another round of the proletariat vs. the bourgeois (pardon my spelling, I’m flying sans spell-check) intellectuals.

This bothers me. A lot.