Disappearance of Both Cursive Writing and Civilization
By Joseph Andrew Settanni
The elimination of cursive writing, as it has been decided not to teach it as part of the required core curriculum in 46 States in the USA, bodes ill for freedom and civil social liberty and encourages psychological, emotional, and, eventually, political totalitarianism. It is Orwellian in its inspiration and marks an ongoing and notable decline in civilization itself towards its, then, necessary disappearance.
The mechanization of all reading and cognate writing, as with only allowing for printed characters, will both provoke and encourage the stricter mechanization of thinking. Cursive script, a valid mode of thought transmission, as with all of calligraphy in general, encourages creative thinking that aides independent thought, besides individuality. But, that direction of things is not the goal wanted. How can this be determined?
The Progressive Education spirit of John Dewey, stressing adamantly social-democratic conformity of mind and will, is what is really behind all that is only pragmatic and, thus, held to be inherently practical. Cursive writing, as computerization of writing advances, is no longer seen as needed in any practical way; thus, it is then considered to be just something that, pragmatically speaking, can be so simply eliminated because it will not be required as such for practical communication purposes into the 21st century.
The prosaic test of mere utility demands, logically, that absolute functionality hold sway. Utilitarianism reigns here supreme. For as Richard M. Weaver had wisely said, ideas have consequences.
The axiomatic ratiocination is, actually, merely tautological, not sound as to reasoning, in its “logical” application as such. This is the pragmatic intellectual vice of reductionism glorified with the added gloss of positivism qua educationism cheerfully favoring cursive’s extinction, which is, as discussed later, intellectually, socially, and culturally barbaric in its integral nature.
Ignorance Supportive of Cursive’s Extermination
All of art and literature, among other examples, is, strictly speaking, pragmatically superfluous and not really needed, of course, for practical purposes of mundane existence. If the tautological sequence of thought is maintained long enough, all of, e. g., civil rights and liberties are equally superfluous because their functionality and operational content and, thus, context is not absolutely necessary as to their abstract natures; as with simple air or gravity, such things, in and of themselves, cannot be seen.
They are mere abstractions, in that sense, as is just the entire realm of political order itself. Jeremy Bentham, for instance, had called natural rights mere useless fictional nonsense, just nonsense on stilts.
With the passing of cursive from existence, only mechanically produced script will be held to be valid or, perhaps, what people may, occasionally, be able to print out with a pen, pencil or similar device that resembles such script or writing. An ever greater utilitarian and positivist conformity of what may be written or, by extension, thought will occur in an Orwellian manner.
Since anything that does not truly conform will be thought an ever greater hindrance to pragmatic communication, all individuality and creativity as to scripted communication will need to be eliminated for practical needs, as to such a firmly pragmatic attitude, of course.
Group think and group thought will, thus, become highly valued in a putatively progressive society that purges individualism in the need for furthering modern communication said to be so simply synonymous with computerization. The computer is the new standard and touchstone of judgment. The practical and pragmatic will, moreover, become the totalitarian instruments of power in a deracinated society and diminished culture where people will be more readily cut off from the cursive past.
A post-cursive era of more mechanized thought will be logically facilitated; this is because cursive then becomes a kind of antiquated communication form only recognizable by fewer and fewer people, generation by generation. Thus, the both conscious and deliberate elimination of an entire form of communication used entirely by human beings, as opposed to machines, is being celebrated as a true sign of progress, not, by definition, a rather severe disconnect concerning human reasoning. A much calculated reduction of human knowledge is incredibly celebrated as an intended function of attending school, which ought to give food for thought (or does it?).
It used to be properly thought a recognizable sign of the appropriate and laudable advancement of genuine civilization, as with avenues of communication, that would increase among people; now, it is not ignorantly perceived at all as being a new form of barbarism and regression, crudeness and mental deterioration, and, in truth, for the direct opposite to be, in fact, accorded a now greater value. If this were not being sanctioned in the very name of modern schooling, few, it is suspected, would doubt the intellectual, social, and cultural stupidity, absurdity, and insanity necessarily involved.
Not knowing cursive, future generations will be similar to the barbarians who encountered the ancient Roman cities, during the centuries after the decline of the Roman Empire, by being totally unable to read the writing on the walls and monuments. Ironically, this time around, there are to be schooled and “educated” barbarians ignorant of calligraphy, especially as it once had pertained to a form of needed human communication.
Conclusion
Man’s once valued humanity will, therefore, be that much diminished in the then notably barbaric quest for extreme pragmatic necessity, mindless utility, and practical applications of a much reduced capacity for spreading thoughts.
The vital and great things that give genuine life to a civilization, such as creativity, ingenuity, originality, spontaneity, imagination, inventiveness, resourcefulness, freshness, innovation, the arts, etc. will be finally all wiped out, as if successfully cleansed by Orwellian-Maoist thought reform; thus, civilization itself cannot, of course, actually live; it necessarily ceases to function; a rapidly reduced future, to the nth degree, follows logically toward a then much deserved extinction.
But, at least, the supposed enormous evil of cursive will have been joyously banished from human minds and hearts, for this is the vile desire (as was so well noted by Sir James Fitzjames Stephens) to shout hallelujah and jump in with the river gods.
