Gongol.com Archives: August 2025
August 4, 2025
If you want a quotation to be remembered, misattribute it to someone famous. Winston Churchill "said" lots of things he didn't really say. Albert Einstein, too. And almost nobody has more misattributions than Abraham Lincoln, whose gift for language and exceptional place in history combine to make him a particularly good "source" for many a memorable bon mot. ■ One of those misattributions is "If I had five minutes to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first three sharpening my axe." It's a terrific proverb, really, even if Lincoln didn't say it. And it's particularly timely at the moment. ■ Conor Sen, an opinion columnist at Bloomberg, ignited a mild online controversy by declaring, "My gut feeling is that parents trying to make their kids elite at reading and writing as a backlash against our screen/video world are like teaching their kids the Dewey decimal system, microfiche, driving a stick shift." He added: "There's not going to be much interesting written content post-2020's." ■ Sometimes people are merely stirring the pot, especially online. But the comments seem to have been taken in earnest by others, and Sen himself has defended the take. ■ Putting aside what Sen intended by "elite at reading and writing" (probably a reference to a recent "sign of the times" article in a high-status publication), reading and writing generally are probably the best examples of "axe-sharpening" life skills that anyone can develop. They prepare the way for practically all other worthwhile endeavors. It's not a matter of elite behavior; in fact, it's quite the opposite. ■ The skills of literacy are valued most by those to whom they are denied. When Booker T. Washington tells in his autobiography how "From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read", he conveys a desire that wouldn't have been different, even if he had lived in a "screen/video world". ■ Much can be conveyed by the routes of oral transmission (video, music, speech, radio, or tales told around the campfire). But nothing in thousands of years of human civilization has exceeded the capacity of the well-written (and usually carefully-edited) written word to convey knowledge, meaning, and depth. ■ The cultural pendulum has swung far in the direction of the oral formats for now, but it's an episodic event, not a permanent change. Even barbarians ultimately come to regret that something is missing. Either things begin to fall apart at the societal level or, individually, they respond to the very same innate spark that animated Booker T. Washington to know that his early illiteracy deprived him of something he wanted very much. Human nature is curious. Plenty more remains to be both read and written.
