>>16786906I know selection bias is directing me towards the dregs of society, and that other places will exhibit higher levels of literacy, this doesn't change the fact that the literate people remain a small minority even on "establishments of the allegedly literate and intelligent people", for instance, even on /lit/ a board dedicated to reading and writing, most all people still communicate in niggertongue and outright refuse to read and condemn paragraphs.
Sadly, the realm of literature holds the lowest standards, since in practice it is pure bullshit, just making things up, as opposed to things which require actual prior knowledge of vast sets of information to have a meaningful conversation about, such as science, history, or math, where somebody who lacks this prior knowledge yet attempts to communicate about the topic will readily be identified as an outside within the community.
This means that myself, as a rhetorician, somebody who just likes to argue about things on principal, the contenders in this field are going to be the ones who got "filtered" out of more demanding and difficult groups to become fluent in.
As much as groups such as philosophy and rhetoric are dominated by "filtered" people, I would still argue they have a significant amount of relevance, at least they did, before the field was merged with mass media and propaganda and debased the field into something which is merely used to indoctrinate and control the peasants.
I'm just sitting here running outdated "software" to communicate, and while my communication style is closer to the "ideal" form, the extreme disparity between ideal literacy and the degenerate literacy of the everyman renders me completely unable to communicate with these people, and that's such a jarring reality to be have my ability to communicate and engage with people essentially waving newspapers in the face of dogs or small children.