Life among the alleged literate (a small rant)

In terms of alleged literate, I mean people who are supposed to have read things, but haven’t. They often say, “I love philosophy!” yet don’t even know their Diogenes’ chicken from their Aristophanes’ frogs.

I grew up in a consanguineous cohort of contagiously captivated readers.

Five years ago, I moved from a major southern U.S. metropolis to a major northern U.S. metropolis.

In the South, where I lived, everyone read. My engineering friends, my no-post-secondary-education friends, those who spoke primarily Spanish and little English; all were veritable readers.

When I moved, my partner and I continued to actually read.

But NO ONE of our actual associates is actually literate. They all claim to have read things, but don’t even know that Candide was Voltaire’s rebuttal to Liebniz’s idea of a world mathematically optimized for the good. They come to our house and see our huge tracts of land bookshelves, and can only vapidly comment that they have such-and-such by so-and-so on their own shelf.

And they claim to love science- yet know absolutely nothing about mathematics, Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science be damned…

I get the impression that if I were to eschew discussion of Dostoyevsky’s portrayals of parts of self in different characters of Crime and Punishment in favor of asking where to get a matching set of their overly decorous Harvard Classics, everything would seem normal to them.

I’ve learned to not talk about all the literature classes I took at my Southern university, or the extensive independent reading list I had to complete for oral examination, despite studying for a STEM degree, or my continued obsession with everything from St Anselm to Robert Jordan, because they’ll never understand.

At least my partner still actually reads- much more than I.

Anyways, being so elite among those who are supposed to be elite is pretty lonely, but at least we have Reddit.