Were people just better readers back then?

[Anonymous No.12276451]

So we all know Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" was written with the common man in mind. But reading it today, it feels more advanced than that. Consider this passage

>Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

Not the most difficult thing in a world, but in modern times this comes across as quite literary in my opinion. Were people back then just better at reading that this was considered "common language"?

[Anonymous No.12276461]

>>12276451
Baby boomers, islam and immigrants ruined reading.

[Anonymous No.12276465]

http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=The_Bugbear_of_Literacy_by_Ananda_Coomaraswamy.pdf

[Anonymous No.12276485]

>>12276465
looks really interesting, gonna give this a read

[Anonymous No.12276487]

>>12276451
It was a much smaller reading public but a far more literate one for reasons that become obvious when you look into it. Not only did they not have all the distractions of our image-based culture, but those who read tended to come from more privileged families or at least understood that literacy was a privilege and not something to be taken for granted.

[Anonymous No.12277458]

>>12276451
Realize that we are now too stupid to understand the jokes in the original Beavis and Butthead show.

[Anonymous No.12277492]

>>12276451
Educated people at that time learned Latin and Greek from childhood and were thoroughly educated in the classics, rhetoric, etc. That's the reason.

[Anonymous No.12277501]

>>12276451
people were either illiterate or hyper-literate

[Anonymous No.12277526]

>>12276451
The class system was the best thing that ever happened to literature and the arts. Its destruction, and the advent of the internet, were the worst things.
That, niggers, and women.

[Anonymous No.12277528]

Yes readers back then were quite limited and so you could expect your audience to have higher intelligence
>iq dropping worldwide is a myth

[Anonymous No.12277531]

>>12277492
Put another way, modern people get an education designed to make them good workers, whereas people in the past got in education designed to make them intelligent and cultured. And it shows.

[Anonymous No.12277545]

>>12276451

[Anonymous No.12277578]

That was back when most who moved to America was relatively well off, before the whole "huddled masses" thing really took off. Piss-poor, uneducated people weren't running off to the colonies of their own free will.

That's my theory anyway, feel free to disprove me if I'm wrong.

[Anonymous No.12277585]

>>12277578
*were relatively well off

[Anonymous No.12277591]

Fuck, this thread is depressing. I hate this world

[Anonymous No.12277678]

>>12277591
Don't project your own self loathing onto the world. It's always been bad, you're just privileged to live in times where you can see it more clearly. Pick yourself up and live an upstanding life in the way you think people ought to live, and you will eventually reap the reward of people following in your footsteps.

>>12276451
Literacy in America was pretty abyssmal back then. Studies of colonial Canada put the literacy rate at a litle less than 50%, maybe even 35%. So if you were reading at all, you were well off, and if you were up to date in political reading circles, you probably had a fairly high conceptual understanding and capability going in. "Mass appeal" just wasn't the same back then.

Also, it is harder to read English in dialects different from the one you speak at home, so it's not out of the question to say people who spoke this horribly probably also could read such awful English much easier.

[Anonymous No.12277725]

>>12276451
g has been dropping steadily in developed countries since at least the early 20th century. Vocabulary and the ability to manipulate, recognize and match concepts to one another are the most g loaded activities with inductive reasoning and visual spatial reasoning being close second and third rank g loaded activities. Its been pointed out countless times that vocabulary scores are rapidly regressing among white schoolchildren and that the general body of knowledge (contrary to popular belief working memory and long term memory are good proxies for iq though not sufficient for genius which is connected with pattern recognition and processing speed more than anything else) most highschool graduated possess is subpar compared to even 10th graders from the late 19th century. Reasons for this range from dysgenic breeding patterns, environmental toxins, mutational load from lack of purging selection and possibly even intermixing with lower iq populations like blacks, irish, hispanics etc. Regardless of how one feels about midwits like Paine, Chesterton, Twain they all possess and uncanny mastery and familiarity with language that one can hardly find even among the most well educated, verbally adept journalists and social commentators. Indeed its quite alarming to see statesman like Obama, Trump, Bush incapable of delivering even short 2-5 minute speeches or answers to questions from journalists without using coarse colloquialisms, incorrect grammar, filler words and cheap low class vernacular. What does this mean for us, for the European race and its cultural endowment? Likely disappearance of the hyper prevalent competence that the enlightenment era white race enjoyed so thoughtlessly and without any question of its almost divinely guaranteed posterity and endurance.

[Anonymous No.12277759]

>>12277725
It's mostly dysgenics, I think. Breeding patterns have changed a great deal with the advent of the welfare state and birth control. I remember reading about meetings of the Harvard alumni association in the late 1800s-early 1900s bringing a litter of 10 children with them. Ironically, the social engineering techniques pioneered by these same people backfired completely, as did Progressivism as a whole.

[Anonymous No.12277774]

>>12277759
A here we go a here we go

Time to jump thread

[Anonymous No.12277779]

>>12277759
>where the graduates were bringing
oops, see, the IQs are going down :^)