Dear George,
The Corporatist State has been the catalyst for many breakthroughs that have greatly improved our standard of living. It is now possible to live in total comfort without lifting a finger or breaking a sweat. In doing so, the State has spun a cocoon around us that is both warm and secure. However, the State’s greatest breakthrough is the silken thread that holds the cocoon together, the thread of a beneficent totalitarianism that is able to oppress without crushing. The Corporatist State has, through clever marketing, internalized the controls within the individual. Totalitarianism, thy name is consumption, that pathological inducement to acquire “stuff.”
It is essential that any totalitarian society, whether good or evil, control the language. Language is dangerous when it sings. It is the poet and the troubadour who create unrest and dissension. To rule, the Corporatist State must silence the song. This is where our primary education system has made an invaluable contribution.
The State gelded the song when it introduced phonics into the classroom, for phonics teaches children to reduce language to units of sound. Phonics drains language of its dynamic rhythm and cadence, which are the heart and soul of both song and poem. You cannot sing a word when you are sounding it out. Each unit of sound is assigned an equal value and the rhythmic dynamic of speech is reduced to a diacritical mark on a blank sheet of paper. A word being sounded out does not move, it does not evoke, it does not stir. The student forced to spend hours sounding out the unfamiliar comes to see language as a chore and not as a liberator. This is how it must be.
Coupled with the technocrat’s insistence that a word have but one meaning, phonics is well suited to the monosonotic drone of value-free policies that crush and destroy. To slaughter, the Corporatist State must first drain language of its dynamic, thus giving us the serene barbarity of the civilized
A nation nurtured on phonics produces neither poet nor troubadour. Either our contemporary troubadours are prepackaged pop stars who are the products of focus groups, or they are obscure indie groups so enraged by the State their lyrics choke on their inarticulate nasal twanging. Either way, the State is safe.
Peace, brother.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
9:30:49 PM 
|
|
