So I'm like, 'Dude!..."

Someone else has noticed, using the Laws of Rational Thought, that the loss of facility with language is related to the loss of the ability to think clearly.

Loss of language among the younger population -- that is to say, the ability to formulate and enunciate properly constructed sentences that reflect clear thought -- is growing at a staggering rate in the United States. Even among students whose academic aptitude is well above the national average, my years as an undergraduate business professor show that four out of five will make grave spelling errors in written assignments or exams, and about half that regularly commit grammatical blunders. The ubiquitous confusion between "there" and "their" may still be considered a quaint and negligible fluke that nearly creates a new orthographic norm; the inability to express lucid arguments must not.

The loss of the distinction (which I have suddenly started seeing everywhere, and in places where I really should never see it at all) between "there," "their" and "they're" is not just a language-snob problem. I don't know if any research could possibly be done to support my observation, but I have seen lately a terrible slump in the quality of writing, even by fairly intelligent people who claim to have attended decent schools.

Some time ago, I posted this that seems to have received some praise in various places.

(Aside: I received a very kind email a couple of weeks ago from a nice chap who asked me for a link. I have to say, and it should be noted by others, that I don't approve of link-fishing. If you have something that is of any quality it will be discovered and its merits will promote it for you. If you go around the web asking for links like a Romanian gypsy begging on the train, you are much more likely to get from me what they get. Which isn't money. But Edward seems like a nice chap, so here, just this once. I'm probably going soft.)

I see that Daniel Mitsui, whose website and work I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically endorse, has quoted me:

Nietzsche said, I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar. If only Nietzsche had lived long enough to see the 1970's and the new education he would have rejoiced at the final triumph of the human will over God...

The Restoration is not only a matter of politics, or even education qua education. It is an essential re-construction of ruined thought. Imagine Western Civilization not as a set of... precious cultural artifacts like the Mass or the Divine Office or legally indissoluble natural marriage or even any philosophical school. Imagine that it is a larger thing than that; it is a framework for our thought, our creative efforts. Imagine that it is the structure that makes something like Chartres or Salisbury Cathedral possible. The container for the idea of Chartres, without which no Chartres could be conceived.

I remember in Narnia, the worst, most horrible fate that the Talking Beasts could imagine was to lose language. To revert to being an ordinary dumb animal, to no longer have the spark of Divine Knowledge that Aslan had given them at the creation of their world.

I know I have written about this before, but I keep coming back to that scene in Prince Caspian when the children and Trumpkin are attacked in the forest by a bear. For a moment, Susan is filled with the horrible thought, "What if he is a Talking Bear, gone wild, who has reverted to the ways of dumb bears." For a dangerous moment she hesitates to fire for fear that she would be killing one of her subjects. When the bear is dead, Lucy, ever thoughtful, says to Susan, "What if, back home, the same thing had happened to men. That however much they may look like ordinary men on the outside, they had really gone wild inside." Susan tells Lucy not to think such horrible thoughts.

I think these horrible thoughts all the time. I think maybe it is what my mother was referring to when she wrote to me once of "the pain you seem to feel all the time."

Probably. It could be that these horrible thoughts have caught up with me, and this could be why I seem never to be able to be happy.

Here I am, typing this on my laptop, sitting in the midst of a glorious, fragrant, singing July day in Italy, 300 yards from the beach, on the balcony of my lovely apartment, surrounded by wonderful friends, employed in good work, in good health and safe. All these gifts, and yet my hope and faith barely clinging on.

I don't know. Maybe I've always been able to see that the facade of the world hides a cultural rot and despair that is only now starting to become visible to others. I remember even as a child, in the hippie-dippy 70s, knowing that the world was not what it seemed. That people were not as well as they pretended to be. That things were falling apart. Or, maybe I should say, being deliberately torn apart. I've always been an instinctual conservative.

I'm going into Rome today, just to hang out a bit. Maybe look at some monuments or art or something. It's important to try to remember that the world keeps going. People keep living and doing things, even when the barbarians are at the gates. Civilisations go up, civilisations go down. True things remain.

Maybe we should have a pop quiz for regular O's P readers. I wish Blogger would set up a thing where, instead of a word verification, you had to complete a literacy verification quiz before commenting.

What are the differences, for example, between the following?

Lay and lie.

Fewer and less.

Who and whom.

Flew and flown.

There, their, and they're.



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