Empowerment to Incompetence

With the origin of the Internet came the empowerment of the incompetent.  For the first time in over two hundred years of history communication became egalitarian, outside the imprimatur of an editor.  Over time advertisers, poets, rappers, and even religious clerics have depredated language with impunity.  Read a blog, listen to a commentator, enter a chat forum.  There one can find the demise of language exquisitely portrayed in the grammar (or lack thereof) of the near illiterate and incompetent.

Watching comments unfold on forums makes one cringe, even scream in frustration.  One can read the thoughts of chatters regarding silly issues, the effects, of which they do not understand, obviously far outside the trite and naïve (if not entirely illiterate) comments.  Each individual shouts ever louder and louder but none is heard.  Obviously psychology’s “talking cure” is being taken seriously, yet it must turn sufferers even more psychotic when no one listens.  No longer even a modicum of decorum is exercised in forums.

      Mahatma Gandhi said:  “It is the quality of our work which will please God, and not the quantity.”  Mother Teresa said:  “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”  The Apostle Paul said it this way:  “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”  It is not so much literacy that we need to save, but excellence.  Let those of us who use the Internet remember this, earnestly contending with our own shortcomings.Observations from the Turtle Pond