READING IN THE INFORMATION SOCIETY
By András Tokaji, PH. D.
There are so many data in hands regarding the extent to which reading and writing have been forced back, and the competence thereof has deteriorated worldwide so much that, I think, we had better deal less with the phenomenon itself and more with its causes. To start with, we can state that
After the ages of faith, discoveries, reason, technology and mass consumption,
we arrived in the age of information.
Hence, let us try to trace down the root of all-evil starting out from the so-called information society and its marketing strategies.
CLASSICAL, MODERN AND POSTMODERN MARKETING STRATEGIES
Up to the present, more and more aggressive marketing strategies have evolved. Although they followed each other, the former ones partly continued to exist with the former ones.
(The ‘classical’ strategy.) The first type of strategy – let us call it ‘classical’ strategy – was aimed at supply. In order to increase their sales, companies first enlarged the quantity of their products and services. Later, – while competing with each other – decreased their prices. Then improved quality. When all these proved to be not enough, they started to spend more money on boosting.
(The ‘modern’ strategy.) When consumer society developed, companies and syndicates decided to increase consumption not only by specific methods but also in a general way. This is the second – the ‘modern’ – strategy, aimed not at goods but at buyers.
Open-shelf system was instituted to enhance people’s purchasing mood in a certain shop. Shopping centers were built to increase buyer’s purchasing mood in a certain residential area. Online shopping system is good for making ordering and paying easier. And credit-card system was designed to make consumers’ money easy to access. These are only four methods of the ‘modern strategy’ having one thing in common: they all make all goods (and services) easier to buy and sell. However efficient these methods were, they were – let it be admitted – somewhat unimaginative.
(The ‘postmodern’ strategy) The third type of marketing strategy – which I call ‘postmodern’ marketing – is aimed not so much at the buyer but at the ‘potential’ buyer bringing a perfect revolution. While in classical capitalism only the state was able to play a planned role in shaping the economy as a whole, today the corporate giants also set themselves the realistic goal of increasing spending capacity in the market.
Producers and dealers managed to get people not only to buy more goods that are specific
but also to make shopping their purpose in life and figure out
how they could buy even more in general.
Moreover, no matter, what. I have an acquaintance whose real life principle is to buy the newest gadgets, devices, tools etc. immediately. In classical commodity-producing societies, man, in addition to buying, could still retain his universality. However,
International capital with almost unlimited power has set itself an even more ambitious goal: expanding the ‘consumer’ side of the personality to such an extent that
it brings the whole personality under its control.The result is “the Consumer,” which is anthropologically nothing more than
a market factor with limited human aspirations and abilities.People, who used to be ‘tool-making animals’ in the past,
proceeded on in the role of a ‘producing’ animal, then as a ‘consuming’ animal’.
And all of this has implications for culture.
INFORMATION IS SOMETHING ESSENTIAL –
READING IS SOMETHING OF NO USE
One would think people buy certain things because they need them. This is not the case at all. They often do not need those objects at all. However, purchasing has never been a key issue so much as today. People have a hunch: if they stopped buying, they would lose the ground from under their feet. They are anxious about some metaphysical annihilation. The reason for this is that the number of people-to-people contacts has been reduced and their relationships have emptied. However, since people cannot find each other, they are forced to try to fill the space and eliminate their sense of lack alone. They are victims of a vicious circle in which they are doomed to delusional compulsions.
In this enchanted world work and the result thereof, skill and knowledge acquisition,
even human relationships, which used to be also self-values at a time,
all have changed into special kinds of means, means of consumption,
things worthless in itself.
It is not knowledge that is set before the student’s eyes, but the graduation certificate that will entitle him or her to work. Just like his “friends” who may help him to find a job. Job is something that enables him or her to money. When one of my acquaintances got his job – a good job for life – the first thing for him was to calculate how many working days he had until retirement. Something tells people that if they stopped shopping, they would not be able to keep abreast with the times and would lose their place in the sun. Today, there are also hypes that stigmatize anyone who buys – or does not buy – according to their personal needs or abilities calling them Cheapjack. After all,
Under this pressure, people are socializing
not so much to the society as to the market.People build themselves up via making money and buying goods – so to say – ‘‘from outside’. To do so, they need more and more information and less and less substantial reading.
People now read the ever-changing tax laws, the filling-in instructions pertaining to the tax return, statements of accounts, advertisements of every sort, lists of prices, mailed publicity materials on discount prices and programs, product descriptions, insurance policies, announcements of vacancies, operating manuals etc. The unspoken password says,
‘Keep being informed and keep others informed.’
Through cookies, human beings also have become kind of goods, about whom others in the market must be informed. Popularity is kind of market value of a person not necessarily based on his personal worth. If you have become popular for some reason, your books will be published and sold no matter they are good or not.
READING IS A DRAWBACK
As early as in the beginning of the 60s, last century, in his essay, I libri nello scaffale, Eugenio MONTALE made a difference between the self-training reader and the consuming reader. The aim of the former is studying, recalling and self-forming. The aim of the latter is amusement and relaxation. As he puts it,
“As a matter of fact, the readers of the publications coming out day by day, do not read, only look and see. If they really can read, their attention is very much like the one of a comic book: they shoot a glance at the book, and throw it away.”
Nevertheless, today the situation is even worse. Formerly there were schooled, that is, cultured readers and consumer readers. Now schooled people, classified as cultured reader before, can happily behave in the manner of a consumer reader. In fact,
postmodern man looks upon literature and the arts
not only as needless but also as harmful things.
He feels as if reading and brooding – so to say – wanted to stop him from making his way in the world. Both practically and mentally.
Practically because he cannot find time enough to read and brood in the rushing life. The mental cause is a bit more complicated. The question is whether he wants to be a ‘winner’ or a ‘loser’. Of course, he wants to be a ‘winner’. The secret of achieving it is uninhibited trickery and pushing. Rat race. Making no scruple about changing your relationships. On the other hand, readings, taken in the classical sense of the word, nurture him on corporate spirit and communal values such as hard work, faith or reliability. However,
he who reads, speculates and meditates a lot, will though be
responsible, reliable but doubtful and irresolute like HAMLET.
The shortest way to be a loser.
THE BASIC UNIT OF THE MEDIA IS INFORMATION
Earlier I spoke about the overwhelming force that mammoth companies and syndicates use to produce a new human race, ‘consumer being’. However, the lion’s share of this enormous task is performed not by the producing or servicing companies themselves but the (national and international, servicing and producing) media companies. Traditional socializing systems like families, public education, the army, churches, sports and art associations continue to exist. Notwithstanding,
it is only the post-industrial media to be complex and imposing enough
to give the impression of being devoted to speak to the ‘entirety’ of the Man.
And the above mentioned traditional institutions work less and less effectively. Shrewd experts turn up any time to prove it willingly that heroic epics of earlier times were, in fact, newspaper articles, and religious frescoes in churches were, in fact, the comic books of early times. Needless to say, suggestions of that kind are mere falsifications – to paint present circumstances in bright colors. The media, let it be about anything from the newspapers to the Internet, relinquishes just the intention to nurture values and create ideas. While the 19th and 20th centuries looked upon public libraries as the basis of democracy, nowadays the media and the Internet seem to undertake to play the same role. Nevertheless, without adopting the traditional canon of values. Which is no wonder. Today’s media makes it his duty to release news and fake news and make profit – not to reveal problems or get to the core thereof.
The basic unit of it is not thoughts but the news,
not knowledge but information.
The postmodern man is sitting in the very middle of the flaw of information streaming through countless channels – the so-called information superhighway – where companies are outdoing each other not only in the curiosity but also in the quantity of the pieces of news. Now there are special news and commercial channels at hand. Never mind! Newscasts are dogging each other with towering rage in all the other radio and TV channels as well, equally in wartimes and piping days of peace. Nowadays there are more (both printed and broadcast) texts produced than ever taken all the previous centuries together.
INFORMATION SOCIETY
VS.
KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY
Governments are ceaselessly bursting with pride that they are building up a so-called ‘information society’. This fact, alone, would not overshadow solid knowledge. However, the fact is that information has superseded solid knowledge. Knowing that they, at the same time, talk about the construction of a so-called ‘society based on knowledge’. However, do almost nothing in order to keep the balance. The sober truth is that
gathering information has superseded
acquisition of knowledge.
Torrent of pieces of information and news in brief – unlike knowledge – are held in higher esteem. This speed has become the standard. Not only a 400-page novel but also a 3-minute anecdote seems to be unfit to hold a candle. “If you cannot summarize what you have to say in two pages, do not trouble yourself, nobody will read it”, summarizes the situation one of MURPHY’s Laws. The media suggests all the time that your knowledge, just as information, will become obsolete very fast. You have more chance to grasp changing reality on the back of the steed of the news racing along. “Be the first to know.” However, there is a shade of truth in it. It is enough to cast a glance at the pace of the technical improvement, the rearrangement of the world after the cold war, the terrorism and the dramatic changes in the climate of the world…
Postmodern man is afraid to read a longer book
for fear that his life will fleet mercilessly.
There seems to be a dilemma emerging. If establishments give way to the values of mass communication, people will not meet the requirements of a highly developed society. That is why governments ceaselessly urge that a ‘society based on knowledge’ must be established. On the other hand, it seems to me that capital and professional knowledge are concentrating in parallel. In his book, Player Piano, Kurt VONNEGUT, Jr., regretted extinction of professions as early as 1952 owing to automation. In earlier societies, one of the most important educational agents and sources of pleasure was various professions. They needed physical skill, complex knowledge, much experience, versatility, highly developed senses, clear judgment and intuition. In addition, they used to be one of the main sources of satisfaction and objects in life. However,
large-scale mechanization and service industry have resulted in the fact that
most of the jobs now consist of two things:
some kind of soul-killing (electronic) paper work and
some skilled labor needing less and less expertness.
‘Life-long learning’, repeated by governments like a parrot to satiety, means acquisition of some special information without any solid professional knowledge. True, you do not need to learn very hard for filling warehouse shelves, doing data processing, handbill distributing or working as a security man. Moreover, several professions, needing solid professional knowledge before, can be pursued with skin-deep knowledge now.
INFORMATION VS. KNOWLEDGE – INFORMATION VS. IDEAS
In his book, Megatrends, John NAISBITT writes that our age is characterized by the ‘mass production’ of information, and ‘mass production of knowledge’ constitutes the motive power for the economy. Do not let us muddle things together. Information means, in fact, practical data: currency rates, times of departure or arrival of flights, court decisions and the like. Their sum total is nothing else but a chaotic mass. Unity is only formed by systematized pieces of information, which is now called knowledge. In his book, The Cult of Information, Theodore ROSZAK raises even higher the standard. He contrasts information not with knowledge but ideas. “Man thinks by ideas, not by information”, he writes. “Mind, by its nature, makes plans, sets goals and makes a choice of possibilities.” In Karl JASPERS’ opinion, CONFUCIUS, the Upanishads, Buddhism, ZOROASTER, the Jewish prophets, HOMER, the Greek philosophers and tragedy writers, laid the intellectual foundation of the humankind. What followed was only a new communication net.
The book, Theórie de l’information et perception esthétique by Abraham A. Moles, proves the importance of what Roszak states. In this book Moles – as early as in the 50s, last century – boasts that he prefers information to works of art. Having made a distinction between semantic information and esthetic information, he writes,
“Part of radio news overtly belongs to semantic information. They condition the answers of part of the (…) audience to be determined logically. Cases in point things like a weather report, if you want to go for an outing next day, current rates of exchange, if you are a shareholder. (…) Another part of the news is, however, practically uninteresting (stressed by Moles): they ‘inform’ us about something taken the word in its common meaning; they kindle your anger or bring joy to you without determining any direct or posterior reaction. However, your memory will store it. This part mainly belongs to the esthetic information.” Later, more outspokenly, states, “Poetry (…) is completely useless. One cannot control the operations of a dredging-machine with a PETRARCH sonnet.”
However, this is not so. People continue to need evaluating and orienting works of art and ideas. Their needs may remain unconscious, that is all. Lack of these needs, however, makes them – based on the law called ‘horror vacui’ (i.e. horror of vacuity, Lat.) victims of a vicious circle. I mean, they try to compensate for the irrelevant character, the poor quality and heterogeneity of the information with the quantity thereof. This is the background of a hypnotic advertising formula of the media, now very fashionable, the ‘info-mania’.
CULT OF NUMBERS
More and more people believe that one can penetrate into reality more deeply with the help of the numbers than with the help of ideas. More and more institutions deal with gathering and processing data. The news, the articles and the studies are swearing with them.
They all suggest that everything can be represented by series of numbers,
and what cannot be expressed by numerical data is out of the picture.
Well, picking up numbers, data requires much less time than reading long studies or books. However, Arthur SCHLESINGER is right in his The Human Looks at Empirical Statistical Research: “Almost every question is important just because no quantitative answers can be given to them.”
People’s thoughts, ideas, behavior and actions
cannot be known by statistical analyses.
On the other hand, dehumanizing effect of data and ‘silent’, meaningless information is well known. Let it be sufficient to refer to the generally accepted fact that any kind of higher assignments or ranks, where mere pieces of information (numbers, data etc.) represent individuals of lower rank tend to serve as hotbed for inhuman actions.
SIMPLIFICATION OF THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES
INTO INFORMATION
Speed reading is nothing else but aimed reading, that is,
degradation of any text to information.
Speed reading brings quiddity and quantity, that is, information, in focus not quality, that is, the meaning. No wonder machines, computers can do speed reading most efficiently. When computers are searching a textual material for particular information, it is called scanning. Let us quote a quite different example. As no air operators or pilot can be expected to speak English, language of the international air traffic, just as well as his mother tongue, the international profession has developed a professional English called airspeak. Airspeak if kind of Basic English simplified and deteriorated variant of English. In order to cut down the number of sources of error, they removed a large part of the syntactical and grammatical tools of the language. Another instance from the field of arithmetical modeling and planning. Programmers often simplify – and misrepresent, at the same time – a complex problem in order that they should be able to construct a model adopted for a computer. Getting information is a good thing; simplification is always fraught with danger.
INFORMATION-BASED EDUCATION
Education has also become information-centered. Concise variants of ‘compulsory readings’ have been patched up and taught. Admittedly because students are overburdened. In reality, because postmodern students simply refuse to read longer novels and books. For the same reason, teachers took refuge in having the students watching some film-adaptations of the novels. Needless to say, these methods are nothing else but transformation – simplification and marring – of masterpieces into information. Evaluation and recitation go on the same track. For a long time, students’ knowledge has been established not by answers to open questions but close tests, the so-called examination papers.
In this way, teachers, so to say, ‘gather information’ on the students’ acquirements
but have no view of their knowledge.
However, it is not done yet. For a long time, students have been studying not the individual subjects, that is, knowledge, but the data likely to be asked in a test. In addition, of course, the ‘know how’ of test filling.
Overall, learning means getting information about
how examiners should be informed about how you are informed.
What the system lacks is thorough knowledge acquired through learning.
GOAL-ORIENTED ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE
VS. SELF-EDUCATION
Goal-oriented acquisition of knowledge must be distinguished from self-education. On a nice day, a secondary school student decided to read as many of the works of the writers and poets prescribed by the curriculum as he could within the prescribed time. That is why he was always legging a bit behind. On one occasion, the teacher asked him about the poet János ARANY, but the pupil could only say for himself that he was only at the playwright Imre MADÁCH. The teacher decided to give him a chance, and asked about the drama The Tragedy of Man and the student delivered a lofty speech. It turned out that he had read not only the drama in question but also part of the special literature concerning it. Therefore, he escaped. A story like that is unlike to happen nowadays because postmodern students are only willing to read what they are likely to be asked at the final exam. Or not that either.
EQUAL RIGHTS OF PEOPLE
VS. COEQUALITY OF OPINIONS
According to the rules of democracy, in particular, liberty of opinion, equal chances should be given to people who want to make their opinions public. However good this news is,
from the fact that everybody is equal before the law in terms of freedom of speech,
does not follow that their opinions are equal in terms of veracity.
Notwithstanding, in our postmodern – information – society, when opinions differ, many tend to think that everybody is right, or nobody is right (as you like it). Although relativism seems to dominate public discourse and people’ minds equally, I am not sure at all that this grotesque – so to say – dialectics of the theory of knowledge will urge people to improve their minds, or to read. No wonder. People read only when they want to know who is right, who is wrong, how things are in reality. All the more feels relativism home in the media. Opinions of different origin and weight alternate with each other, and form a colorful and attractive diversity.
All you have to do is follow the news and, eventually,
you will find your own truth.
INFORMATION IS READY-MADE SUBSTANCE OF KNOWLEDGE
EASY TO OBTAIN AND SUBSTITUTE
A secondary-school student corrected his teacher stating that “AENEIS is the person, and Aeneas is the work” – and not the other way round. Cases like this show that people tend not to make a clear difference between information and knowledge. The student relied on his own experience, and thought that the name and the title were mere pieces of information, just like telephone numbers, which his teacher simply forgot. He did not suspect that his teacher knew the relation between the name and the title. Still less he thought that his teacher had read the epos and several studies on it. That he not only remembered but also was convinced of the facts in question. Incidentally, that is why conviction based upon knowledge can only be given up on the ground of checked data and examination. This is not the case with information.
A piece of information can be overwritten easily
by any other piece of information any time.
So you happily say, “Yesterday I knew it differently but today I got different information which changed my opinion.”
ADORATION OF INFORMATION
What can you make of a communication saying that ‘Ambulance cars in Hungary travel 60 million kilometers a year’? If it was up to me to run, I think I would find it a bit too much. To cover all the emergency cases, maybe, it is insufficient. There are so many pieces of information of this kind, that media-consumers, on a long run, grow accustomed to them. In the end, their happiness cannot be ruined even if they do not really understand the information or do not exactly know what is to be done with them.
Notwithstanding,
according to the information theory, ‘information is anything that can be coded and furthered by a channel linking the source and the addressee – irrespective of its semantic content.’
The power of the vehicle, that is, the media, is powerful enough to give rhyme and reason to and authorize anything alone. It develops kind of narrow mindedness, I mean, a firm belief that there is no human thinking without modern information technology, that is, without the Internet, computers etc.
Teenagers believe people did not make or play music
before the age of electricity.
People spend a lot of time by doing crosswords and watching quiz programs day by day. These kinds of relaxation make them feel that complex relations of the world or performances of intellectuals and artists can be grasped by one or two pieces of information. Apart from encyclopedias, which – for safety’s sake – everyone furnishes himself with, there are books on sale specially designed to prepare you for doing crosswords and answer quiz questions. If you buy and learn them, you can become kind of a – so to say – ‘mental’ body-builder champion, who can gain sums each equaling as much as the 20-year income of a university professor. In addition, very nice examples for the misuse of information are media programs with the title ‘What happened on this day in the past?” or “Who was born (or died) on this day?”. I hardly believe that anybody could make use of pieces of information sporadic like this. However, they will always sell even on public channels. They are kinds of sacrifice offered to the ‘deity’ of information.
LITERATURE AS INFORMATION
We should not be led astray by the fact that the media deals a lot with literature – the poets and the writers. Either they are asked to give political declarations or – as they are witty and jolly good fellows – their interviews are very nice. However, no lines from their works can be heard in the program. As there are a huge number of programs of that sort, the audience knows, so to say, ‘everything’ about them – without having heard a line by them. This is how the media keeps literature on the ‘information level’. Although the TV series, called ‘Big Book’ was designed to encourage people to read, you could take part only by watching the stars on the screen. Now politicians cannot imagine that popularization of reading – or that of anything – can be performed with any other means but the audiovisual media. Where, of course, the winner can only be the vehicle of the program – the media.
THE NEW AGE OF ‘VISUAL CULTURE’
One of the most conspicuous features of globalization is using – whether new or old – vehicles of communication on a large scale in order to surmount communication difficulties springing from the divergence of the languages. The problem is that some of the new methods solve the ‘communication gap’ by avoiding verbal communication at the same time. The maxim goes,
‘If you want to make yourself understood by anybody,
don’t speak.’
That is why one of the characteristic features of globalization is an extensive use of pictograms and different kinds of electronic displays. They lead you without a word on public roads just as in the world of goods and on the Internet.
A teacher of language complained how difficult it was for him to make studs speak in fictitious everyday situations. Then he realized that children did not even know what he wanted of them. Why, they were born in a society of commodity producers where self-servicing and open-shelf systems, various displays and pictograms render speech unnecessary. The same holds in respect of the postmodern, so to say, ‘silent’ films, which can be completely understood even by illiterate people. They suggest people that Humans can go happily without speaking…
In our society, proudly called ‘information society’, more and more people are illiterate. After all, entire sections of towns and cities are filled with people living happily in a country without speaking the language of it. Let me cite one more illuminating example. A friend, who is, besides, a clever young man, working as a computer programmer, admitted me that he reads – nothing. Or, more precisely, something yes. He is following world yacht championships taking place on the oceans round the world with the help of the Internet. He is doing all that in English with his English so poor that he could not even pass a basic level exam…
We are repeatedly told that we are living in a ‘visual culture’. The beauty of it is that this kind of ‘culture’ does not involve reading – which is, after all, kind of visual activity. However, there is some problem also with the term ‘culture’. Cross-cultural word-picture transformation involves kind of unification and simplification at the expense of the message becoming abstract, meaningless and empty.
There is one more point. Visual communication – especially mixed up with sounds and music – represent an overwhelming effect upon viewers that neither the media nor anybody who uses it is willing to abandon. With the help of pictures, the media can convey hints and suggestions and, when recommendation or order is the message, it can intensify their impact substantially. Also important, the intention can be concealed, at the same time.
IMPATIENCE AND HEDONISM
You must have noticed that
If one knows very little or nothing about something
he or she tends to think it is boring.
Things are the same with young people, who – for lack of preliminary knowledge, references – are likely to think that reading is boring. In the past – when reading and knowledge used to have prestige value – adolescents still had willpower enough to swing over stretches seeming too boring or difficult to understand. When they were reading Victor HUGO’s lengthy and detailed descriptions or the theological argumentations by DOSTOYEVSKY, they had a hunch that their effort would make them profit, and help them to understand the full picture. However, today’s young people want instant success and delight, which they can obtain with the help of the media without further ado. Unfortunately, their behavior is confirmed by modern pedagogy. Uncritically accepting complements about students’ overload, they are always putting down requirements.
Let me now a brief Freudian excursion. I assume that civilization pressure on the teenagers of the 60’s, last century, began to lessen. As a result, Freudian Id got free from under the pressure of the Freudian Superego. This is proved – among others – by the so-called students’ riots of 1968, and the frantic success of the BEATLES, which can be explained mainly by extra musical related factors.
In parallel with these developments, demand for the compensation for suppression slackened. And, as one of the most characteristic ways of compensation was creating and other kinds of cultural activities – as FREUD coined it, sublimation – in this way, one of the relevant motives of reading has ceased to exist. G. B. SHAW’s maxim seems to be being realized:
“What we call education and culture is (…) the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.”
Needless to say, this was only an example of Shaw’s self-irony, which was proved by his oeuvre. Although one of the most famous poets of Hungary, Attila JÓZSEF, admitted, ‘Whenever I am writing, I feel that what I most want is not to write”…
PREPARING ONESELF FOR LIFE
Children and adolescents’ socialization takes place partly in their own communities, partly via the languages of symbols, guided by their reading experiences. This is when their moral behavior and emotional intelligence take shape. This is when their attitude to problems develops and their objects in life assume a form. Amusements are important but only of secondary importance. Ancient Greeks and Romans were reading Iliad and Odyssey for centuries. In the Jewish-Christian, civilization generations used to re-read the Bible year by year. Readings of that kind let them be sacral or secular, short or lengthy, are generally unfathomable.
They are filled with allusions very obscure even to the men of that time. They are based upon complex systems of symbols. They have more than one – sometimes contrasting – layers of meaning. In addition – finally yet importantly – they have always been rather disquieting readings. Their understanding requires spiritual preparations, suspense, concentration, absorption, and detachedness from everyday life. In addition, much patient in the hope that, as time passes, one will apprehend more and more of it. Modern bestsellers are designed to meet this kind of demand of the postmodern young. However, they represent no real human emotions but clichés of standardized states of mind. Clichés that are enough to be recognized lacking everything that could be known. To recognize clichés, information is enough. No need for artistic forming. As a result, these semi-works of art are not disquieting at all. They are only good for arousing some pleasant wavering state of excitement.
Neither can one cherish the hope that the elder generation will train the young for education. Namely, the classic ‘parent – book – child’ trinity has dissolved. The ‘parent’ has been replaced by the child’s own age group, and the ‘book’ has been replaced by the media. Through pursuing their own selfish peculiar and political ends, the establishment and the media managed to monopolize the young. As a result, the generation gap has deepened to the extreme. In Konrad LORENZ’s opinion, young people of our age regard their own parents as representatives of another species. With an indisputable anthropological acumen, Hungarian children call their parents simply ‘ancestors’. The youth seems to be entirely happy about their independency. They fully rely on their own age group and their object of adoration, the media. In this way has been shaped the ‘the own age group’ – ‘the media’ – ‘child’ trinity.
Neither the family, nor schools, nor traditional churches, nor the intellectuals have any chance to play a role in the youth’s socialization. As for the media, it satisfies their wishes with meticulous care all the wishes of the young. More precisely, all the wishes it itself aroused earlier. As for the young, they feel that the media is partly their own means, partly some kind of their patron, benefactor, or superego, whose suggestions they should follow. A young computer fan confesses, “You create your own Universe, where you can do what you want. You needn’t bother about other people.” PETRUCCI characterizes the postmodern reader – whom he calls ‘anarchist’– with the same attitude: “I read what I want to.”
PASSIVE ATTITUDE
VS. SELF-EDUCATION
Digital devices have individualized the use of the media to an extreme extent. That is why people have the strong feeling that hi-tech has brought them freedom. They do not need to be at a certain place at a certain time. Have to wait for social occasions, adopt themselves to companies or circumstances or follow any course. It is totally up to them to decide what, where, when and how long to watch, listen or read. The all-world receivers were the first device to make a dazzling change of speech and musical pieces accessible. There used to be quite a lot of people who never stopped at any radio station, but kept on screwing the button of the tuner instead. The so-called ‘zapping’ followed it, that is, manipulating the TV remote control, which also resulted in addiction. Moreover, a medical survey showed an outstandingly high incidence rate of cardiac infarction among the people changing the channels all the time. Then zapping created its own genres, music clip and compilations of pieces of films, in which very absurd pictures alternate with each other with no coherence and some sort of music in the background. This sequence was followed by compulsive clicking with the mouse while surfing on the Internet, which results in addiction again as early as in childhood. PETRUCCI writes in Lire pour lire. La lecture littéraire, “By zapping consumer gets accustomed to messages consisting of heterogenic fragments, which are ‘meaningless’ seen from the rational and traditional perspective”,. They are messages easy to follow paying even minimal attention to and the creation of which ensures even the maximum of tension and playful participation”.
People being accustomed to or even abandoning exact comprehension of texts is also a sign of the times. A proof of that is poor compositional style of young people – no matter they are educated or not. A Hungarian student had to translate a short reading from German. The result went like this, “Production process is the last phase of packaging”. The student was happy with a sentence that was grammatically correct but did not mean anything at all. Here is another translation. The original sentence was, “The pile of paper is almost as high as the cathedral in Cologne.” And the translation: “EU translation services deliver 1 million pages every year competing with the cathedral in Cologne, from which they erect a pile of paper”.
These examples prove not only the fact that the students’ German was rather poor, but also the fact that they put down totally nonsense texts on paper any time having no qualms about whatever. By the way, Hungarian streets, the media, instructions etc. are full of meaningless texts. When I finished this paper, I had it scanned with a grammar and spelling program. Well, wherever I put down the phrase “classical readings”, it suggested “immortal readings”. It corrected “promotion of products” for “popularization of products” with a similar determination. Seemingly, the students have gotten accustomed to the fact that they do not understand texts written even in their mother tongue.
“Information is given to us by somebody”, writes Fritz MACHLUP in his study, Semantic Quirks in Studies of Information. “On the other hand, knowledge can be obtained by thinking”. You can make inquiries systematically but the point is not that. Nevertheless, MACHLUP’s message is clear: knowledge can be obtained only with effort because work lies in knowledge. Things are not the same with information. Useful information is something that can – and must – be bought. As people are not fully aware of the difference between information and knowledge, tend to think that whenever they have bought information, they have bought knowledge at the same time.
Getting some information by underhand practices is a routine matter. On the other hand, you can read about people entering into possession of some knowledge overnight by eating a special kind of apple or getting a magic ring only in the Bible or in fairy tales. However strange it is, postmodern man thinks like that. As he thinks knowledge is very important, he spends a lot of money on books and lays back at home looking round his huge library. However, he will not read them because he has a hunch that the decisive thing – the purchase – has already been done. A large part of the income of language schools comes from people who pay the expensive tuition fee but, even so, do not attend the course. They also have a hunch that they have already complied with the requirements by enrolling in the course.
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS BECOME EXTERNALIZED
Knowledge and skills of the postmodern man are regulated ‘from outside’ by enterprises and political institutions are externalized. Namely, a feeling is growing upon him that the overwhelming mass of information will remedy his deficiency of solid knowledge. All that seems to be proved by the fact that a great part of information is accessible in encyclopedias and on the Internet. Experienced journalists encourage debutants to learn handling information sources skillfully in the hope of getting an expert in any field within several hours. In this way, a kind of – using PETRUCCI’s term – “paraliterature” comes to being, which is designed for some superficial and discontinued way of reading. Additionally, owing to new technology, skills like handwriting or mental computation, which used to be considered as basic skills earlier, now are getting needless things. Not to mention score reading…
EDUCATION AND READING
ARE MATTERS OF POWER
In his novel, Hard Times, Charles DICKENS makes schoolmaster GRADGRIND the following prophetic statement: “In life, only facts are needed. Do not plant anything else, and root out everything else. You can shape the soul of thinking animals only on the basis of facts; never can they make use of anything else.” By saying so, DICKENS criticizes the early English utilitarian idea, which today’s information society formulates as ‘facts speak for themselves”. According to this belief, news – information – is identical with the fact itself. This is, of course, not so. If it was so, we should not do anything else but sit in front of the radio, the TV set or the computer, and receive the news. Chester ANDERSON’s opinion on rock music is just as much untrue saying that rock is kind of ‘tribal phenomenon’, as Marshall MCLUHAN’s ‘global village’ utopia suggesting that global telecommunication will bring back the intimacy of medieval villages. The truth is that in the flood of information surrounding us, significant and insignificant, right and false information chase each other.
As a rule, establishments did everything possible to guarantee monopoly of inquiry and education for themselves. The means thereof have changed depending of the state of technical development and the existing social systems. As early as in 1795, the Hungarian palatine, Alexander LEOPOLD, addressed a memorandum to his elder brother, FRANZ I, who was terrified by the so-called ‘French ideas’. In this memorandum, he declared Hungarian institutions of higher learning unnecessary. He wrote, “Experience shows that as soon as peasants have learned to read, they stop discharging their own economic duties. Instead of this, they apply themselves to reading newspapers, political pamphlets and books, and, by doing so, spoil their thinking”.
In parliamentary democracies, things are not like this. As nobody can be deprived from his right for education, people’s interest in education will be spoilt. “Computer fans do not take it into account that overflowing of data is not incidental (…), but controlling strategy of the society often done with extraordinary consciousness and professionalism. One of the methods of modern governments and spheres of power is obscuring things according to their own interests. They blind and confuse citizens with so many data that they, eventually, cannot make head or tail of them,” writes ROSZAK. Both commercial and political ambitions lead to the fact that literacy campaigns proved to be more successful in reading than in writing. But the so-called ‘dysfunctional literacy’, which is rather common, shows that the point is not the knowledge of the letters but reading and writing practice upon which literacy competency is based. Both the establishments and the citizens, who feel responsible, harmonize with each other in establishing that the clue is freedom. The ‘only’ remaining point to understand is that the essence of human freedom is not free abandonment of education but free education.
The establishments and citizens who feel responsible also agree in the fact that Human’s main goal is obtaining experiences. The ‘only’ question is how intensive the experience is. Intensity of an experience depends on the number of the people we are able to draw into it, on the quantity of the effort, the labor and sacrifice at the expense you have managed to obtain it. As the most significant features of postmodern man are individualism and laziness, he can only get experiences of limited intensity. He is suffering from it – no matter he does not know about it. On the other hand, all the activities that could render him real experiences (such as outstanding performances in sports, learning or labor, growing up children of merit, establishing deep human relations etc.) and a meaningful life, appear as something ‘necessary evil’, which he tries to do without paying attention, and with the least possible effort.
The object that students have in view is not any knowledge to obtain but some certificate enabling them for continued education or taking some job. However, the situation remains after entering service. When an acquaintance of mine had taken his first job at a leading symphonic orchestra, the first thing he did was to compute the number of all his services to do up to his retirement. A so-called goal-oriented strategy has become a standard of life. In this strategy, the sequence of the goals will be overrated, and all the activities serving the purpose – including studying and labor – will be underrated. In the 19th century, a Hungarian classical playwright, Imre MADÁCH, wrote a profound drama, Tragedy of Man, which surveyed the history of the humankind. Structurally, the drama consists from two parts. The first is the drama itself, suggesting that although civilizations and social systems have been alternating throughout the centuries, human freedom still could not be accomplished. The last, somewhat optimistic statement only represents the other part, saying, “Man, do wrestle with the difficulties, and do not lose your confidence in the future”. Symptomatically, this line was simply omitted in the postmodern staging. Overall, for the postmodern man, all the activities, making up real meaning of life, become kind of nasty things. And the best strategy they have endure survive is what common language calls ‘I’ll survive on my hunkers’.
However, life is not something to survive. At least, one should provide for the illusion thereof. That is the purpose of the cult of virtual experiences encouraged by the neo-liberal moral and ensured by an unrestricted supply of goods. Nevertheless, reading does not fit into the cults of speed, aggression, sexuality, drug addiction, gambling, purchase and information. Because postmodern man is frightened of vacancy, and seems to be scared even more of facing real questions of life. MCLUHAN’s idea of the so-called ‘direct’ information is naïve and unfounded. On the other hand, everybody who makes their living by the production, controlling, selection, organization and distribution of information, intentionally preserves the appearances of normality. By doing so, they keep nourishing people’s conviction that reading is a time-consuming, unnecessary thing.
TRANSFORMATION OF HUMAN BEING
INTO ‘CONSUMER BEING’
Today hypes not only advertise goods but also make a point of reinforcing consuming behavior. Now and then, they call everybody refusing to buy some particular goods ‘miser’ or ‘money-grubber’. That is to say, they morally stigmatize, outlaw anybody who buys according to their own personal necessities or capacity.
TRANSFORMATION OF ‘HOMO POLITICUS’
INTO ‘HOMO VOTING’
Besides the promotion of goods and services, and the transformation of human being into ‘consumer being’, mammoth enterprises and syndicates regard politics making part of marketing. Political socialization of the people and their political discourse are getting more and more reduced to their quadrennial voting activity. Economic and political headquarters disposing of most of funds and influence are counter-interested in making people able to understand the long and complex mediatory chain linking up their prospects in life and their votes. They seem to put up with the fact (if it is not their own ambition) that people gradually stop thinking independently and critically. Accordingly, they carry out peoples’ indoctrination not via books but some kind of purposeful selection and classification of information supplied with special hints calling for refusal or acceptance. As a result, the people with borrowed identity become more and more kinds of ‘desire-machines’ and ‘hatred-machines‘. And when elections arrive, they tend to vote impulsively just as they buy.
In spite of the immense differences in terms of the technical contexts, one can state that the Roman Empire saw a very similar phenomenon as early as thousand years ago. As Ernst BREISACH writes in his book, Historiography, Roman citizens neither could refer to the Senate nor to the Imperial Palace for the previous had lost competency, and the latter was only releasing puffs and gossips. By that time, reading public had been represented not by lettered citizens but by ignorant dependents. In addition, as people were not able to participate in public matters any more, they only wanted information and relaxation. That is why they also refused to read history, which was full of moral lessons.
Published in Valóság, 2006. (Vol. 49.), No. 11. pp. 49-58.
