Postliterate Era

Illustration by Copilot Designer

What was once forbidden because it might liberate minds is now ignored because it no longer commands attention. Knowledge is not a commodity that is valued much in our postliterate era.

Postliterate describes a culture or stage in society where reading and writing are no longer the main ways people share and get information. In a post-literate world, books and printed text take a backseat to videos, audio, images, and digital media. Unlike being illiterate—which means a person cannot read—being post-literate means society chooses other ways to communicate even though people still know how. [Wikipedia]

Today people depend on social media, video apps, streaming, and suchlike for getting to know what they want to know. There’s AI to give all necessary support too. So books have gone out of fashion.

There was a time when printed knowledge was considered extremely precious, so much so it was restricted to the powerful few in societies. The Brahmins in India kept all worthwhile books to themselves by hook or by crook. The Christian priests too kept quite much knowledge to themselves using methods as barbarian as the Brahminical ones – such as banning of books, censoring science, and punishing dissenters and so-called heretics brutally. Muslims were more open to knowledge in those days, but alas today they have become worse than the others.

Knowledge is power. So it’s only natural that those who wielded power withheld knowledge from the majority population.

It is said that, 2300 years ago, King Ptolemy of Egypt envisioned a library that would safeguard the sum total of humanity’s knowledge. His successors ransacked every ship that arrived at Alexandria, searching for scrolls which were then preserved at the Mouseion, a shrine to the Muses modelled after Aristotle’s Lyceum.

Much of the history of that library built by Ptolemy’s successors has been lost. But it reminds me of the great library that plays a dominant role in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose. A blind monk named Jorge de Burgos who is the librarian ensures that nobody reads Aristotle’s Poetics because he doesn’t want anyone to read the philosopher’s appreciative views on comedy. [Eco cleverly played on the absence of a chapter on comedy in the extant Poetics.] Jorges believed that laughter was undivine. Christianity is quite a sad religion. Gloomy to a depressing extent – though the outlook has changed significantly over the centuries. Monks like Jorges didn’t want Christians to laugh. In the process of keeping Aristotle’s views on comedy away from potential readers, Jorges killed many monks and finally burnt down the colossal library itself.

Today’s postliterate generation would cock a snook at Jorges and Ptolemy and the ancient Brahmins. Even the herculean endeavours [or Bhageeratha Prayatna in Indian idiom] made by Modi Inc to revitalise Brahminism in the country aren’t bearing sufficient fruits because the youngsters aren’t interested anymore in fruits that were forbidden centuries ago.

The ultimate paradox in this context is: Sanskrit was forbidden to the masses for centuries in India and now it is being force-fed to a generation that doesn’t swallow it come what may. Why would anyone want to learn a language that died long ago just because it was kept locked up by some elite and powerful people?

Forget divine languages like Sanskrit and Latin, books in any language are not wanted anymore in the postliterate world.

From Brahmins guarding Sanskrit to Jorge hiding Aristotle, power once thrived on withholding knowledge. Today, the paradox is inverted: knowledge is everywhere, yet indifference withholds it from ourselves. The postliterate era proves that censorship is no longer the greatest threat to wisdom – distraction is.