/lit/ - Literature

>Progress? It is true that, today, at least in all highly organised countries, nearly everybody can read and write. But what of that? To be able to read and write is an advantage--and a considerable one. But it is not a virtue. It is a tool and a weapon; a means to an end; a very useful thing, no doubt; but not an end in itself... to what end, is it generally used today? It is used for convenience or for entertainment, by those who read; for some advertisement, or some objectionable propaganda--for money-making or power-grabbing-- by those who write... Generally, today, the man or woman whom compulsory education has made "literate" users writing to communicate personal matters to absent friends and relatives, to fill out forms--one of the international occupations of the modern civilised humanity--or to commit to memory little useful, but otherwise trifling things such as someone's address or telephone number, of the date of some appointment with the hairdresser or the dentist, of the list of clean clothes due from the laundry. He or she reads "to pass time" because, outside the hours of dreary work, mere thinking is no longer intense and interesting enough to serve that purpose... The higher the general level of literacy, the easier it is, for a government in control of the daily press, of the wireless, and of the publishing business--these almost irresistible modern means of action upon the mind-- to keep the masses and the "intelligentsia" under its thumb, without them even suspecting it.

>... “It is, we repeat, by far easier to enslave a literate people than an illiterate one, strange as this may seem at first sight. And the enslavement is more likely to be lasting. The real advantage of universal literacy is to tighten the grip of the governing power upon the foolish and conceited millions. That is probably why it is dinned into our heads, from babyhood onwards, that ‘literacy’ is such a boon. Capacity to think for one’s self is, however, the real boon. And that always was and always will be the privilege of a minority, once recognised as a natural élite and respected.

>>14926545

>Progress? It is true that, today, at least in all highly organised countries, nearly everybody can read and write. But what of that? To be able to read and write is an advantage--and a considerable one. But it is not a virtue. It is a tool and a weapon; a means to an end; a very useful thing, no doubt; but not an end in itself... to what end, is it generally used today? It is used for convenience or for entertainment, by those who read; for some advertisement, or some objectionable propaganda--for money-making or power-grabbing-- by those who write... Generally, today, the man or woman whom compulsory education has made "literate" users writing to communicate personal matters to absent friends and relatives, to fill out forms--one of the international occupations of the modern civilised humanity--or to commit to memory little useful, but otherwise trifling things such as someone's address or telephone number, of the date of some appointment with the hairdresser or the dentist, of the list of clean clothes due from the laundry. He or she reads "to pass time" because, outside the hours of dreary work, mere thinking is no longer intense and interesting enough to serve that purpose... The higher the general level of literacy, the easier it is, for a government in control of the daily press, of the wireless, and of the publishing business--these almost irresistible modern means of action upon the mind-- to keep the masses and the "intelligentsia" under its thumb, without them even suspecting it.

- Savitri Devi

>>13758697
>Progress? It is true that, today, at least in all highly organised countries, nearly everybody can read and write. But what of that? To be able to read and write is an advantage--and a considerable one. But it is not a virtue. It is a tool and a weapon; a means to an end; a very useful thing, no doubt; but not an end in itself... to what end, is it generally used today? It is used for convenience or for entertainment, by those who read; for some advertisement, or some objectionable propaganda--for money-making or power-grabbing-- by those who write... Generally, today, the man or woman whom compulsory education has made "literate" users writing to communicate personal matters to absent friends and relatives, to fill out forms--one of the international occupations of the modern civilised humanity--or to commit to memory little useful, but otherwise trifling things such as someone's address or telephone number, of the date of some appointment with the hairdresser or the dentist, of the list of clean clothes due from the laundry. He or she reads "to pass time" because, outside the hours of dreary work, mere thinking is no longer intense and interesting enough to serve that purpose... The higher the general level of literacy, the easier it is, for a government in control of the daily press, of the wireless, and of the publishing business--these almost irresistible modern means of action upon the mind-- to keep the masses and the "intelligentsia" under its thumb, without them even suspecting it.

- Savitri Devi

>>12844050
Because Hinduism is the best-preserved remnant of the original Hyperborean wisdom tradition that manifested itself further west in the form of Zoroastrianism, the Greek mystery cults and early ascetics like Pythagoras et al.