Dead Poetry Society
The decline in letter writing has led directly to our culture's disinterest in Language.
Every week, I write about technology and culture. All of the images and quotes in this piece are from the film, Dead Poets Society.
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
Why are we not more concerned that widespread interest in literature, poetry, and speech is falling off the cliff of modernity?
Our culture’s tragic disinterest in letters stems, in part, from our culture’s disinterest in letters. There was a time, not too long ago, when the postman would grace your home with a letter for you. And when you got that letter, you’d sit down for an hour—in silence—and read it, re-read it, and re-re-read it; and every time you read that letter you’d examine it from a new angle: What’s behind that tone? Why was that word used? Why so many questions? And after each sentence had been picked clean and a painting stood where the letters had lain, you’d sit down and write your response.
These letters made everyone a writer and everyone a reader, and they were central to our love for Language. Without them, you get society as it exists today: songs are “good” instead of “seductive”; girls are “fire” instead of “tantalizing”; the clouds are “crazy” instead of “sullen.”
We should be more curious about Language and strive to re-discover some of the magic that has been lost. That doesn’t mean we should model our speech after pompous Yale professors or constantly search for “ten-dollar words”, it means that we should think more carefully about the words that we use; it means that we should really try to find our own voice; it means that we should regain an appreciation for how others write and speak. We should use Language to make the world a more beautiful place.
So if you think that it’s worthwhile to become more mindful of our language, and you are open to the idea that letter writing might be important to this end, then it’s worth exploring a few questions: Why did we lose letter writing? What are the consequences of its death? What has replaced it?
The Battle of the Telephone
This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls.
The telephone began the war against letter writing, which moved us from long-form, written communication towards the spoken word. Why was this such a powerful strike against Language?
For starters, it is a hellacious task to become more articulate through speech. Since you are operating in real-time, you do not have access to a dictionary or a thesaurus, so the best you can do is try to choose the right word from your existing knowledge base. But even that is difficult: the listener on the other end has limited patience for minute-long pauses while you search for a word that’s a few (important) degrees off from the one that immediately came to mind.
Conversely, we have an abundance of time and resources when we write letters. This abundance is part of the reason that writing is the best way to expand our vocabulary. Reading is a close second, but the words that we learn while writing stick more because it is an active pursuit: we put more time into searching for exactly the right word, and then we use it in a personal context, which makes it hard to forget.
In addition to making us less articulate, the telephone also robbed us of our regularly scheduled time for contemplation. While it’s possible to have a long, thoughtful phone call, it doesn’t call for the same meditative setting that letter writing demands. It’s hard to imagine someone sitting down to write a long letter absentmindedly, and it’s very easy to imagine someone taking a phone call while cooking dinner with one eye on the TV.
The Coup de Grâce
To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?'
The telephone shot our interest and bombed our contemplative hours, but the coup de grâce would only come from modern technology’s nuclear arsenal. Let’s recount its success.
Social media and the smartphone have succeeded in leveling our attention spans so that we can no longer read poetry or long novels without constant escapes to the world’s most popular crack pipe. This addiction to an unfulfilling virtual reality makes it more difficult for us to lose ourselves in the worlds that authors help us create. Now, we alternate between mainlining nicotine and Instagram stories, and we are left without the ability to explore more expansive realms.
Furthermore, the new communication mediums that these technologies have spawned seem unsuited for improving our capacity for Language. Texting has created an always-on, unfocused environment in which we pick amongst a few of the most base adjectives to describe anything positive or negative: cool, lit, dank; whack, lame, beat. And since most friends would respond with incredulous emojis if met with poignant descriptions through these mediums, we just stick to “lmfao.” And why describe a scene at all when we could send a photo? Why tell a story when we could send a video?
The Modern World
So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys—to woo women—and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.
Within the scope of the modern world, it seems increasingly unlikely that letter writing will experience a renaissance; at best, we can hope that this medium will be chosen at least for special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, the commencement of trips. And when these letters are written, they will be kept forever. (My parents still pull out my writings from when I was a child, my ex-girlfriend still has the poem I wrote her on a receipt, and my aunt still has my best friend’s thank you note.)
The more realistic path for restoring our interest in Language is that more people lock themselves into some form of regular, long-form, written communication. And while this can be achieved through attempting to hold one’s self to a writing schedule or trying to grow a blog, these solitary pursuits are devoid of the social pressure that interpersonal communication mercilessly applies. It’s easier to skip a blog post this week than it is to skip responding to your mother’s heartfelt, 700-word email.
Only time will tell if we will become deeply interested in the humanities again, or if we’ll continue down our current path of spending our free time flitting through Twitter and TikTok. I sure hope we choose the former, otherwise life will dry up a little bit, and that is quite sad.
Dead Poetry Society
Interesting read. In a culture obsessed with instant gratification, rapid fire "you up" messages on Tinder or Whatsapp, and having conversations via memes rather than spoken words, it definitely seems we've lose some of our ties with Language - literature, poetry, speech - and the gift of the gab
All poetry is "dead" if you use the term "mid" on a regular basis