George Will: too shallow for American republicanism and digital-literacy?

Some writers for the press bemuse readers more than inform them. It takes self-interest to dig out of the confusion.

George Will, in “Our society too shallow for democracy?” questioned the depth of his society whereas the writers he cited had focused on the individual. Will bloviated on Adam Garfinkle’s essay, which Will says “elaborates on Maryanne Wolf’s idea of ‘deep literacy’ from her” 2018 book. One wonders if the three authors associate with authors of the website deep-literacy.com or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_literacy. Sometimes, writers neither bloviate nor elaborate but bait and switch for reasons only they may suspect.

Having read Garfinkle’s article, I was confused by Will’s seeming acceptance of “democratic culture” and “liberal-democratic politics” in this US republic---a system that pursues statutory justice. Garfinkle, seemingly promoting “a brave new world order that enforces diversity and radical, undifferentiated egalitarianism,” perhaps erroneously concluded that “Populism of the illiberal nationalist kind is . . . what happens in a mass-electoral democracy when a decisive percentage of mobilized voters drops below a deep-literacy standard.” He seems to promote “democracy” as enough Alinsky-Marxist organization (AMO) to defeat at the voting booth the U.S. republican form of government. I think and hope the entity We the People of the United States is too integral, just, peace-making, strong, and prosperous for dissenters to defeat responsible human independence.

Deep-literacy in the U.S. republic might focus on individual human equity under developing statutory justice. I think that is the tacit people’s proposition in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps digital-literacy is accelerating the American purpose, which is stated in the U.S. Preamble.

I think the thesis of Garfinkle’s article is “[T]he advent of deep literacy, by enabling a new sense of interiority, is the proximate source of modernity via the rise of individual agency that it allowed.” To unpack the sentence a little: see http://www.deep-literacy.com/; think of “interiority” as psychological existence; think of “individual agency” as acting in self-interest. I interpret Garfinkle’s sentence to mean that I need to choose literature that serves my self-interest and comprehend it enough to criticize, in writing, the writer’s arguments. Perhaps digital literacy dominates print literacy and is therefore in the individual’s self-interest. In this second Garfinkle quote, I see no room for AMO soldiers.

I share with Will a belief in arguing with the author, whether Plato or George Will. I also don’t believe I have discovered my creativity until I write then revise my interpretations of the author’s ideas so that I might constructively criticize, positively or negatively. I sense personal hubris in perceiving that my literary friendship with Plato, Chekhov, Faulkner, Emerson, Einstein (more than the rest), and many other thinkers empowers me to improve on the concerns expressed by Burke, Hume, Smith, Locke, Paine, Lincoln, and many others.

However, my hard work cannot compare with the smart work that is going on among the coming generation. What comes out of my onrush of attention to digital literacy is the motivation to update my wife’s flip phone and, halfway to my ninth decade, purchase my first cellphone, a smartphone. It’s just another reason I am glad I subscribe to National Affairs (thank you, NA).

  

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