A Modish Proposal

In a post-literate culture, books are for losers.

Luncheon in the Studio by Édouard Manet (1868)

Back in university, our English literature professor assigned Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.

After peeling myself off an undisclosed living room carpet, I trundled into university at the ungodly, semi-torturous hour of 9 a.m. The Geneva Convention still drags its heels in deeming this a cruel and unusual punishment.

The hall filled up in dribs and drabs. One kid, the type who nodded furtively even when there was nothing to nod at, couldn’t wait to tell the world what he thought of The Modest Proposal.

Reader, I cannot directly quote here. One, because memory fails, and two because memory fails. Anyway, he charged into the work.

“Quite frankly,” he said. “I think it is disgusting. To think that even a few hundred years ago someone of apparent letters would propose such a twisted solution to poverty and to hunger is quite frankly abhorrent.”

After relishing his clearly rehearsed diatribe, he sat down and glanced over at the girls. To reward his brilliance, had they disrobed in the hope he sires them with his superior genes right then and there? There was to be no public Genghis Khan moment.

The lecturer, a Clark Kent lookalike with an expressive Roman nose, didn’t know what to say. Neither did anyone else. I admit that in my hungover, hangxiety-ridden, did-I-use-protection state, I briefly pondered whether the joke was on me. Swift was serious?! He meant we should feed poor children to the rich?

The professor said: ‘Interesting point’.

The lecture hall took on the air of the firing squad. Surely, someone would let fly the first bullet? Aiming neatly above his head, the professor revealed as one would deliver a diagnosis of a terminal illness. Swift’s Modest Proposal was “not given in sincerity”—the bourgeoise version of the proletarian phrase: Are you fucking stupid or something?

The boy crimsoned. His face beat so red he looked like a disgruntled toffee apple. “Oh, no. I knew that” he said. “Of course. I just. It’s just. I think. You know. Of course. I… it’s just shocking to me how… you know… how like… anyone could even print that as a joke?”

(I add the question mark to denote the Millennial tendency to dement declarative sentences into questions for fear of getting things wrong.)

I learned a new word that day. Fremdschämen: The German word for vicarious embarrassment or ‘cringe.’

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In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift visits a realm of tiny vanity called Lilliput. The Lilliputians are thumb-sized in body and pea-sized in brain. Concerned chiefly with the trivial and the tiny, they war over the correct method in which to crack an egg. One side insists on cracking the top end. The other side the bottom end.

Swift’s most effective technique is defamiliarization. He scrapes clean an accepted definition, allowing us to see anew.

In describing lawyers, Swift says: “There was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society, all the rest of the people are slaves.”

Across several islands, Swift encounters and vivisects a different element of human nature and our many failings and follies. For his observation humans are often backward, loathsome, petty, murderous, sly, parochial, and ignorant, Swift earned the title of a misanthrope.

But Gulliver’s Travels could have been written today. The parallels demand little insight. That was Swift’s point and Swift’s vindication. Those Swift encountered could represent any and all of our species. From the tribal football hooligan to the machete-wielding Tutsis of Rwanda, to those tiresome, lank-haired, ultimately harmless characters who, when presented with a stranger wearing a Ramones t-shirt, demand the wearer ‘name three songs.’

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I wonder what Swift would make of today’s dopamine culture which prizes the instant over the mature and places the trivial and crude over the thoughtful and nuanced.

In the age of reality TV, and its evolution in social media, our culture prizes aesthetics and performance. Presidential candidates must be ‘good on TV.’ Thinking and reasoning have given way to emoting and sloganizing. Academics call this post-literate culture ‘secondary orality.’ Oxford Sour calls it ‘Idiocracy.’

Our Very Online age offers a culture of extremes. When offered two diametrically opposed viewpoints, we pick a team and fight the other team to the death.

Our denuded attention spans allow for little more than what the other person just said. The context and the nuance dissolve, skim-read, into the ether. ‘I didn’t read the article, but here’s my fervent opinion!’

Reading is essential to progress. Reading enhances critical thinking, and creativity, and allows connection, empathy, understanding, and a broader perspective. The post-literate age, terrified of nuance and thus complexity, allows ‘fuck you, Nazi!’

According to a UCL study, there’s a direct link between time spent scrolling a screen and falling literacy rates. Others suggest reading has never been more unpopular amongst the youth. Americans read fewer books now. Literacy amongst English six-year-olds has fallen to its lowest in a decade.

Reading has never been more unpopular amongst the youth. Just a quarter of kids say they read for pleasure.

Yes, I know Plato feared the invention of writing would dumb down the youth. But we can see today the corrosive effects of an early post-literate culture. Have a gander at Twitter.

By neglecting to read, one fails to follow thoughts to their conclusion. And fails to create new thoughts. These days one could go all week without producing a single original thought.

In a post-literate culture, we are little more than automatons beholden to our whims and follies. Nuance and complexity, then, are not ideals to pursue but contaminants to stamp out. Perhaps we are already there.

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A friend of mine sends me the worst examples of human ignorance featured on Twitter.

The pick of the recent bunch was Andrew Tate, the pornographer and pimp toward whom some social conservatives gravitate.

Anyway, Tate doesn’t like books or learning. He said:

“Reading books is for middle-brain losers. It’s brain masturbation bullshit cowardice. ‘I’m learning so much without risk!’ You’ve learned nothing. Winners act. Losers read.”

Well, reader, Swift had a point.

Here’s a modish proposal: Monsieur Tate and his books-are-dumb ilk stick to their primitive dictum of action over reflection.

This reminds me. I’ve noticed a tasty-looking mushroom growing at the bottom of my garden. A manual on deadly fungi suggests it might be a Death Cap mushroom. It might not be. It might be perfect with pork belly and garlic butter. Such mushrooms can render one mute for several hours as one’s bowels evacuate with relentless regularity. They can kill you. It’s a culinary Russian Roulette. Of course, Andrew Tate would not first consult a cowardly book. That’s just brain masturbation.

After all, winners act. Losers read.

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