Education

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A Post-Literate Society

Introduction

I have commented on this blog more than once that we live in a postmodern age. Can it be added that we live in a post-literate society? According to Jeffrey Tucker (Epoch Times, 7/12/2026), the answer is yes, and I have to agree with him. Moreover I find what he says applies to me, a baby-boomer, as much as it does to the Gen. Z and millennials. We have available today a multitude of online resources, but we have let technology take us in a direction away from reading for critical thinking and growth toward entertainment, socializing, and for all practical purposes just downright gossip online. 

An “Old Technology”

Johannes Gutenberg (1395-1468) would most likely be pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by what his invention of the printing press led to in the centuries that have passed by since his time. One of the major things the printing press brought about was the publication of the Bible that post Reformation allowed people to have Scripture in their own hands so they could read it for themselves. What followed in the intervening centuries was the creation of poetry, essays, and prose that led to a literate society. The idea of reading as an old technology has given birth to the idea that we can accomplish the fruits of critical thinking online in the same way that reading books in the past allowed us to do then. But is that the case? 

Have we substituted in-depth reading, searching out ideas for ourselves, and coming to conclusions with a quick search online and the use of all-powerful AI technologies? I fear we have. And what is more, I’m guilty. It’s easy to simply search for something, take it as the gospel, and espouse it the name of critical inquiry. Like many, I too find myself spending too much time online searching Facebook posts. Now there is nothing wrong with online technologies, AI, or Facebook, etc. But can we over rely on them for solid, well searched out information?

Reduction in Critical Skills

Not only has less reading led to a diminished reading skill among elementary, middle school, and high school students, but it has also produced a mentality that is bereft of critical thinking, math skills, and the diligent search for accuracy. One of the by-products of a post-literate age is the notion that whatever one finds online, and whatever one does in fact read, is the truth. Such a mentality demonstrates the lack of due diligence to search things out and a diminished ability to critically appraise information. Reading skills are not simply about ones ability to read, but also about ones ability to think. One result of living in a post-literate society is gullibility. The elite political class loves such a reality because it means that they can say what they wish and not have their claims questioned. Those who do question them are on the other side, but those who accept what they say as the truth are on the right side. All one has to do is note the change in so-called political debates over the last couple of centuries. And given what Robert Bellah calls expressive individualism, to live life by feelings rather than critical inquiry meshes well with a post-literate society. 

Information Abounds

Technology is not evil or useless. But how we engage it and what we do with it might well be useless, and in some cases evil. Note legacy media today, regardless of what side of the political spectrum on which one sets. But technologies can bring us wonderful blessings if we will only put them to use. I own a Kindle, which will store up to 3000 books, depending on size. As Tucker points out in his article, that means one can have a gargantuan amount of reading material at his or her disposal with out having to build bookcases and haul such material around every time one moves. There are also available to us websites such as the Gutenberg Project, a site that contains nearly 78,000 free ebooks that one can download on a Kindle. In addition there is Storyliaz Love Reading website that allows readers to engage discussions and debates regarding literary classics, putting an end to what the creators of that site call doomscrolling. Think about how many hours we spend scrolling useless sites and discussions that are no more than the utterances of one’s feelings rather than the product of critical inquiry. Additionally, many libraries allow readers to download books from their holdings. There are numerous websites from which one can discover and order books that are no longer being published or are out of print. There is no reason whatsoever that technology cannot mean a boost to increased reading. Yet it in fact has led to the opposite. Why is that the case?

A Decrement in Reading Skills

Evidence abounds regarding the diminishing reading skills among students from elementary to college level. As stated above, a decrease in reading skills means a loss of other skills, particularly critical thinking skills. We live not only in a postmodern and post-literate age, but also a time tainted by gullibility. The absence of critical thinking means the inability to nuance. (Tucker points to an article authored by Rose Horowitz from the Atlantic, July 8, 2026.) Horowitz proffers that post-literacy favors emotional and contradictory styles of thinking over carefully nuanced ways of thinking. Does this not indeed fit a postmodern age in which people believe they can create their own realities and truths in alignment with Nietzsche’s madman?

Conclusion

Jeffrey Tucker closes his article with a powerful question: Can real literacy be regained?  He doesn’t provide an upbeat answer, but he calls on the responsibility and diligence of each one of us, proclaiming that there is something we can do. Moreover, he states, the pull to post-literacy is overwhelming. There is no doubt about that. In an age where the triumph of the therapeutic (Philip Reiff) has taken hold along with the desire to equate feelings with truth and authenticity, the post-literate destruction of critical inquiry is real. F. A. Hayek once claimed that while it takes time and diligence to build a civilization, such a result can be destroyed in a short period of time, while the effort to restore it, if ever, will come with much difficulty and time. 

References

Bellah, R. (1985). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 

H. A. Hayek. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. London, UK: Routledge Publishing

Horowitz, R. (2006). “The End of Reading Is Here.” The Atlantic, July 8th, 2026. 

Reiff, P. (1966). The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Tucker, J. A. (2026). “Just How Post-Literate Are We?” The Epoch Times, July 12, 2026. 

John V. Jones, Jr., Ph.D/July 14th, 2026

ANALYSIS/Cultural Commentary

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Birthing The State

Introduction

I was reflecting on a title of a book written by Murray Rothbard, What Has Government Done to Our Money?, and begin to wonder how we as a nation had reached the point where we make the distinction between the government and us. If anyone has read Rothbard, he too is an enemy of the State, and makes clear in his writings that what we think of as government today is indeed a tyrannical State. Our language uncovers our thinking – our beliefs – in a way that shows our nakedness regarding our subservience to the State.

Removed Far from the Founders

It is easy today to make fun of and dismiss the saying, government by, for, and of the people. But what those words signified at one time entail the legacy that the founders hoped to bequeath to future generations that would come after them. The so-called government was not to be separated from and rulers over the people. No reason to spend much time on that bit of history. We lost what it meant a long time ago. Listen to our language today. The government needs to do something about [name the problem]. The government is our security [domestic and international]. The government should provide security for people in their older age [ social security]. The government should provide affordable healthcare for its citizens [Medicare/Obamacare]. The government should educate our children [public education]. So on, so on, ad nauseam the public trough is extolled. As Rothbard points out in many of his writings, the belief system that such language uncovers had given us not a government, but an all-powerful State. In what ways have we, the people, handed our livelihoods over to the State?

The Military Industrial Complex [MIC]

George Washington, in his farewell address, warned the citizens about entanglements in the affairs of other countries, particularly regarding foreign conflicts. Yet today we have military bases in numerous countries throughout the world. We engaged in a useless conflict with Mexico in the late 18th century, and following W.W. II, we engaged in one police action after another from Korea to Afghanistan, nation building not only to our demise in terms of loss of life, but to the nonsensical goal of forming a Pax Americana over the globe. Globalism clearly raises its ugly immoral head both in progressive and neoconservative ideologies. The MIC determines our foreign policy around the globe. As Randolph Bourne put it, War is the health of the State. Critics claim that George Washington didn’t live in a time of globalism, internet, and nuclear weapons. Rather than a criticism of Washington, this is even more a rationale to remain free from political and military entanglements around the world. So-called isolationists are not calling for a return to the agrarian society of Washington’s time. It’s simply called taking care of your own backyard and minding your own business.

Health, Wellfare, and Social Security

We have likewise created the nanny State through the belief that the government should take care of all our health, medical, and retirement needs. Don’t look now, but the government is thirty-five trillion dollars in debt. To take care of all that people call on the State to do for them is unfathomable in terms of, not only dollars, but also in the ability required of a centralized Sate. Hence, the State has become the number one employer in the country. Yet with all its touted expert bureaucrats, it can do nothing but plunge the nation deeper and deeper into debt. Since there is no possible way to continue to soak the people to pay for the promises of politicians handed out to their constituents, then the State via the Federal Reserve turns on the money machine, cranking out dollar bills, flooding the economy with unearned money that drives the prices of what people really need higher and higher, creating more and more need. The government has become the people’s god.

Education

The government should provide education for our children. Given the belief system of the country as it now stands, public education has become a disaster. The so-called educational experts dictate to the parents what their children are to be taught in the neo-indoctrination camps. Unfortunately such curricula include gender identity along with other forms of wokeism. Note how intensely public educators attack private education and homeschooling, especially when those institutions are grounded in a Judeo-Christian ethic. From the perspective of the State, children do not belong to their parents; they are wards of the State. Until people truly threaten public educators with their right to remove their children from such State institutions, placing them in private educational facilities, homeschools, or homeschool co-ops, public education will continue to drift father away from its original educational goals, moving deeper and deeper into the social indoctrination camps they have set themselves up to be.

End the Fed

Ron Paul hit the bullseye. End the Fed is a worthy slogan aimed at removing the State from the regulatory role it plays in its dealings with private business, especially small, privately owned businesses. Entrepreneurs have become severely hampered, if not outright crippled, by federal, and even state, regulations. We need to heed what happened in Germany’s hyper-inflationary period in the 1920’s. With a thirty-five trillion dollar debt, inflation continuing to destroy the strength of the dollar (regardless of what politicians say), and entrepreneurial activity being obliterated, we are facing a similar situation that haunted Germany in the years following W.W.I. We may want to play ostrich, choosing not to believe that such a plight cannot happen in America, but such a plight is not external; it is internal. We have created the State, believing that it can and should meet all our needs, as if bowing before an oracle, rubbing a genie bottle, or approaching a gift dispensing machine. Such a worldview is just that, a worldview, and a false one at that.

Conclusion

So what has government done to our money? Rothbard is right. The government has become a State, not one that invaded us, but one we birthed because of the worldview we hold. As a Christian, I believe that only a Judeo-Christian ethic can be the foundation for a truly prosperous and moral civilization. I don’t hold out much hope for this nation. But that is due to my own lack of faith. I call on those of us who truly believe in the name of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God to pray for our nation and to do our own part in our our own settings via the local churches to counter the rise of the State that we have brought about.

John V. Jones, Jr, Ph.D./October 14th, 2024

ANALYSIS