Among the daunting, challenges to the appropriate functioning of our interactive society (in addition to the impactful impersonality of “smartphone” transmissions and its often, ill-timed, digital-like responses) appears to be the general absence of letters, notes, messages and other forms of personally written communication. In this era, with the exception of informally, scribbled, self-reminders such as on (usually, yellow-colored) “post-its” or quick scribbles on calendars, one seldom witnesses the employment of handwritten or transcribed writing. The latter observation, sadly, appears to be empirically, consistent with an unfortunate, all-pervasive, trend in the direction of societal impersonality, the necessary result of which is the consequential lack of the comforting assurance of emotionally, reliable familiarity.
The fusty, pedagogic debate concerning the benefits and drawbacks, respectively, of “cursive” or “manuscript” styles of writing, would now appear to be empirically, useless, since few citizens, contemporaneously, communicate in handwriting. The closest comparative would seem to be the somewhat, inadequate, act of “texting” by smartphone, by which in computer jargon, (as opposed to humanistic expression), one transmits the “bottom line information,” usually, with little or no personal context. We have consistently, maintained that Society has unwisely, and tragically, surrendered its effective, communicative modes of interaction, in exchange for the inadequate, populist, aspiration for facile and rapid “efficiency.” As a consequence, its population of citizens, with consistently recognizable identities, was socially, metamorphosed to a cold and impersonal, electronically, computerized, practice of “passwords” and “log-ins.” Society, unwisely, chose to, no longer be beneficiaries of the interactive, interaction as corresponding, individuals, with comfortingly, identifiable, personalities, but, instead, relegated to far less communicative, and less expressive, electronic symbols.
Recently, we were walking behind a presumed, grandmother and her late-teen-age granddaughter. We could not avoid hearing the granddaughter discussing a situation in which she was entirely misunderstood by a certain member of the family. When the grandmother suggested that the granddaughter write the relative an explanatory, letter, the young girl replied: “A letter? Nobody writes letters anymore, it is so retro!” We were shocked at hearing the granddaughter’s annoyed, and strident, response.
We do not subscribe to a return to the historic and archaic, age of the “belle lettre,” (although we have read sufficient of such lyrical masterpieces [of the 18th and 19th Centuries, to appreciate their aesthetic beauty) but we are sincerely, disturbed by the sheer impersonality and absence of contemporary humanistic, written interaction. Fashion, and folkways, themselves, do, admittedly, change, however, appreciation of the existential, societal elements, of human identity and personal, expressive, nuance, are humanistic matters, far too precious and valuable to (ever) deservedly, suffer, the epithet of being “retro.”
Written communications, such as personal notes and correspondence, by their pragmatic opportunity of offering, prior review before posting, encourage the thoughtful and precise expression of the writer’ exact intention and, ultimately, the receipt by the interlocutor, of a meaningful communication. For those who do communicate by written letter, the personal style of each correspondent becomes recognizable, analogous to the pleasant, and assuring, recognition of a familiar voice. Written correspondence can, usefully, be kept as, loving mementos or historically, biographic records.
Mankind’s writings, not unlike his anthropologically, discovered footprints, afford probative, circumstantial evidence of his prior existence, and his empirical life on the Planet.
-p.
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