As C. P. Snow contributed most of the emergence and enlargement of two cultures to the literary culture supporters, more and more people started to question the need for the literary culture; it seems outdated and useless in the contemporary society with rapid scientific and technological advancement. However, although new technologies, media, economics, ecology, and science are changing the literacy culture environment, literacy culture still plays a crucial role.<\/p>\n
Specifically, literature culture is still an essential need of the twenty-first century because of its ability to inspire new ideas, providing effective communications, and offering predictions and related warnings for the future based on the past.<\/p>\n
Literature culture is still a pressing need of contemporary society since it is the vital element for inspiration, which is the foundation of explorations of the unknown in society and cultures.<\/p>\n
The fundamental driving force of development in all aspects of society is always inspirations and imaginations, which mainly emerge from literary culture. Literature culture, one area that sets up a unique platform for people’s thoughts, has allowed people to expand their imagination and record inspiration from nature. Even today, literature still functions as a vessel, building an invisible bridge for people to learn something new from the past (Austin). Consequently, the novel knowledge or perspective serves as the initial inspiration. With such initial imaginations and inspirations, individuals could continue contemplating and questioning about a particular phenomenon, thus eliciting the potential development in related fields, which includes science, the so-called another pole of culture in C.P. Snow’s scheme.<\/p>\n
Also, as Austin argues, “without knowledge of what has been said in the past, without experience of how reading and writing can nurture thought and imagination, without a sense that the fictional and poetic are part of the human technologies for encountering the real, efforts to understand and act on the world will be poorer and more reductive than they need to be.” Given that literature culture induces the emergence and expansion of imagination and inspiration from nature among people, the foundation of curiosity and prospective exploration in a different field is provided for people, ultimately guiding various advancements, which might bring benefits to society. As a result, literary culture is still a pressing need in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
Besides, the capability to ensure effective communication is another reason why literature culture is a pressing need of the 21st century.<\/p>\n
It seems that literary culture is no longer a desperate need for contemporary society. Still, if one examines the next step after any discovery, the individual would immediately notice the subtle need of literary culture: a standard and appropriate communication method is required. If one could not use a neat and effective language format to explain the discovery and related exploration, then the discovery would not be understood. It would remain an ignored, unaccepted work in public. Similarly, Paulson points out the significance of literary culture because of its ability to ensure effective communication among peers in a particular area: “if we scholars and critics want to place our creative, critical, and interpretive work in the large and urgent context of the present, we need to get out of our milieu and encounter the world, at least encounter what people in other fields and walks of life can tell us about it.” Without understandable communications, there would be no beneficial promoting comments, dialogues, and arguments, which is such a devastating effect on the advancement of all facets of contemporary society. After all, social improvement comes from effective communication in different communities, bolstered by literary culture. With that being said, the literary culture is still a pressing need for our society.<\/p>\n
Additionally, literary culture is crucial as it offers references in the past, which could facilitate the emergence of prediction in the future, giving people potentially useful warnings.<\/p>\n
One distinct characteristic of literary culture is that it changes more slowly than science. Such a feature of literary culture sheds light on protecting the consistency of description and record of history. From consistent literature work, people could find changes and continuities of society in history. Such information would confer important messages to notify or warn us of the future trend of a particular development in society.<\/p>\n
For instance, literary culture offers warning regarding the rapid advancement of scientific technology without checks and moral guidelines for scientists, which evokes contemplation about contemporary society’s scientific ethics. One striking example is Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World: the book describes drugs as one powerful scientific tool to “brainwash” people. The creepy yet immense power of drugs in this book alarms us that there is an immense shadow of the similar hallucinating psychotropic drugs’ synthesis advancement in contemporary society (Miller). More and more people become aware of such issues, leading to corresponding contemplation and regulations. Currently, more rigorous rules exist regarding the control and use of hallucinating psychotropic drugs (Miller). In this example, to some extent, some harmful and destructive elements of scientific advancement are contained thanks to the warning extracted from the history and literary culture. Thus, one could feel the power and necessity of literary culture as a warning scheme for our society’s future.<\/p>\n
With the features of conveying imagination and inspiration for potential development, allowing the occurrence of effective communications among people, and the facilitation of the emergence of useful warnings based on the history, the seemingly outdated and dysfunctional literary culture is still a crucial and pressing need for the 21st-century society.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Literature Cited<\/p>\n
Austin, Sophie. \u201cThe Importance of Literature in Modern Society.\u201d\u00a0Findcourses.co.uk<\/em>, Findcourses.co.uk, 26 Sept. 2019, www.findcourses.co.uk\/inspiration\/hobby-fun-leisure-articles\/the-importance-of-literature-in-modern-society-17411.<\/p>\n PAULSON, WILLIAM. \u201cLiterary Studies in the Twenty-First Century: A Future for the Humanities.\u201d Colloquia Germanica<\/em>, vol. 35, no. 3\/4, 2002, pp. 201\u2013216. JSTOR<\/em>, www.jstor.org\/stable\/23981975.<\/p>\n Miller, Richard J. \u201cBrave New World? Aldous Huxley and Psychotropic Drugs.\u201d\u00a0OUPblog<\/em>, 22 Nov. 2013, blog.oup.com\/2013\/11\/psychotropic-drugs-alduous-huxley-brave-new-world\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As C. P. Snow contributed most of the emergence and enlargement of two cultures to the literary culture supporters, more and more people started to … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[469963],"tags":[1005,1178,973,358,54566],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5274,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273\/revisions\/5274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}