The disturbing spread of illiteracy in the modern world.
Hello, I wish everyone a pleasant continuation of life before and after reading this little letter. I've been writing and reading for years, even though they don't belong to my university major, which is much more scientific than artistic.
I've always been in touch with books since I was a child. Sure, tastes and reading depth have changed, but love hasn't. I started with classic children's fairy tales and then ended up reading Milton's Maldoror and Paradise Lost (which I truly recommend reading at least once in your life)
The thing that amazes me, even if it actually saddens me deeply, is the immense epidemic of functional illiteracy in a world where information is almost at global reach. We have atomic speed, and we can find anything on Wikipedia, off site ecc. Yet we fail to grasp what any of that means, or we don't even possess the will to do it.
Reading does not mean understanding
I have, unfortunately, met people who are incapable of making sense of excerpts even at school level. And I'm not talking about complex excerpts like the Divine Comedy (Which Should Be Studied), but also about much less complex novels. I note that this is not a problem with reading ability. People can read; if I say dog, they know what a dog is. The problem is that you can't see beyond the dog, what's beyond the dog on those pages, the meaning behind it, and the intention. Obviously, this also leads to poor interpretive skills.
Blame is also to be found in the brains of modern humans. The constant surplus of dopamine has significantly lowered the attention threshold, which was already low in humans two decades ago, but currently there is talk of a 68% drop from 2004 to the present time. Such a reduction also makes understanding and introspection more difficult. The fact is, it's not a cognitive breakdown, but a loss of habit. We simply decide to not invest more in our nervous potential.
It will affect art
Inevitably, in such a system, art cannot exist as a function of it. If something doesn't sell, it's not acceptable, but this creates a genuine paradox: art is, in fact, a practical and moral delight. If art becomes a product, it simply stops being one and therefore we cannot consider it as such. Much of what the big entertainment industry produces is slop doing numbers because it is designed to accommodate the masses. We see it with GTAVI, with The Odyssey, etc. Our interest is a tangible product that turns into money, and if the tropes alone established our interest, then that is what we will find ourselves served. This is not meant to be a manifestation of holistic reasoning; I believe that the sum is always less than the product, but I cannot deny that we also caused the decline as a mass.
Niches exist and still defend true art, but their problem lies in the thorn that supports them. If they become popular, they risk being absorbed into the system, and if they don't, they make minimal change.
Are only novels the problem?
Sadly not, we have suffered a bastardization of novels and of what can be defined as a book in general. I don't criticize personal tastes, but I can't help but notice a wide decline in the quality of modern works. Games like NIER, Silent Hill, and FF (og) were once made; now what I see are recycled mechanics, stories that aim to propagate simplistic themes or are treated bizarrely. There is no longer satire, the desire to read between the lines, and so on, and this brings a bit of anger. The existence of AAAs has caused irreparable damage, but people accept this, unable to be more careful about what they play, since they don't realize that video games are also an art form. I've seen people fail to understand Death Stranding or even completely erase the meaning of Undertale, so much so that I doubt whether they even played them, and here we're not talking about interpretation, but about failing to understand exactly what moves the story.
A bit of Humanity in this Rant
This is absolutely not a promo, and I genuinely want to send a message, seeing how the platform is smaller and perhaps I'm able to reach more people.
The world of tomorrow does not want you to be thinkers, but you have to keep going and improve yourselves. Always dance, paint, write, plan, and work on yourself, and lend a hand to those around you. A masterpiece is never a single line, a single brushstroke, or a single note, but lots and lots of evidence as to why everything has to go there, and that's what makes art. Read and love to do it, and if you don't understand better! You can improve on that, too. Life doesn't seem like it's something to enjoy, but we have the tools to always improve it! If you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, then draw it however you like.
Make sure you think and finally tell yourself what you think of the strangest and most twisted work we have: the world.
