[AAACE-NLA] modernization thesis

[AWilder106@aol.com]

Dear Andres,

As always, nice to talk with you.

No, you are not totally dumb, just working on different questions, and I kind of cut across your bows.

I know  about  the Enlightenment (thanks for the review,though, that was helpful), in fact Spinoza is one of my favorite guys, he was a lens grinder.

Today Tom posted his agenda if he were  literacy president, don't I wish....

The thing is, what made the Enlightenment the Enlightenment was hundreds of little inventions.  There was also the middle class.

We crossed into modernity with the machine technology. With the printing press literacy spread in Europe.

Fast Forward to the 60's, when as George said, the idea that a bunch of changes, I guess you'd say, could propel African countries into the modern world, meaning the shift from subsistence agriculture to machine agriculture.  Education, basic literacy, was a social good that was supposed to make the transition happen. Boom!  The modern age.

Then you have people like Levy (I think) saying that modernity acts as a universal social solvent....and if you read the newspaper, you have to agree.  

Lately we have China getting into the mix, and now India, if Tom Friedman has his way.   One reason our oil prices are higher is  competition from China (I think I read this). Anybody think oil prices will go down?  Appreciably?  Can't go back to wood, not enough of it.  What will India do for energy?  Nuclear?  Pakistan?

Unless someone on this list can propose another thesis, I think this is a realistic picture, meaning reality=based.

We  are all adult literacy devotees, teachers, administrators, learners, etc. Literacy is a part of modernity.  Seeing what the future probably looks like--hazardous--what can we advocate for in the field of adult literacy that decreases the hazard?  Literacy is a technology--what does it do that we can use for our own future?

9/11 showed us how interdependent this country is, vegetables from California, for example, or South America.  Suppose social security checks  couldn't get to recipients?  Back to barter.

The Sri Lankan villager may be better equipped to survive than we are.

Andrea