Dumbing-down of society

As I listened to Time of My Life, the Black Eyed Peas' newest hit broadcast on a local radio station, I couldn't help but reflect on the dumbing-down of our society and the demise of everything poetic and meaningful.

The song will instantly catch one's attention as it begins with lines from the famous 80s Golden Globe and Academy Award song (I've Had) The Time of My Life. However, the new song has been transformed, or if I may say deformed, into a ‘dirty-bit' version, a version far from the aesthetic and the beautiful.

Here are some of its lyrics: ‘Dirty bit / Dirty bit / I-I came up in here to rock / Light a fire, make it hot / I don't wanna take no pictures / I just wanna take some shots / So come on, let's go / Let's lose control / Let's do it all night / ‘Til we can't do it no mo'

What is most unsettling here is that our children, the future generation, are bound to recite and sing such vulgarity, and what is yet more disturbing is that most parents and mentors are standing helpless while their children's minds are being poisoned!

Regrettably, in the modern age and time, the sanctity of poetry has faded. How many of the youth who happen to be receiving an education of first-world-standards can recite a Shakespeare or T.S. Elliot poem from beginning to end, or a poem of Abu Alaa' Al Ma'arry or Mahmoud Darwish?

Shamefully, the future generation is one that employs smiley faces to express its emotions where all ‘contentment', ‘happiness', ‘bliss', ‘ecstasy', ‘elation', ‘jubilation' and ‘euphoria' are amalgamated into one computerised smiling yellow face!

Even more disconcerting is the fact that although children cannot recite a poem, they most definitely can sing every word from a Black Eyed Peas song. Why aren't children interested in downloading, for example, a song like Nikki Yonofsky's I Believe, the theme song of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics?

Here is an excerpt of its lyrics: This is the moment we've dreamed of all our lives / We'll be the change we wish from others / We'll stand tall for what is right / ...The arms of the world will come reaching out / And embrace me to be all that I can be / Now nothing can stop me / From a world brought together as one / I believe together we'll fly / I believe in the power of you and I.

The song calls for the togetherness of humanity, for each human to be the change they wish to see happen, to reach out, to embrace, to dream, to believe ...

A different period

Once upon a time, a poetry-reciting game was played in our Arab culture. The rule of the game was that once a line of poetry was recited (it could be chosen from any poem ever written, past or present), then the last letter of the last word in the line was to be used as the first letter in the next one.

Hence, the players had to be capable of reciting a poetry line that begins with any letter from A to Z (or in Arabic, from Alif to Yaa), because they would lose the game if they ran out of lines. If this game were played in English, for example, player one could recite from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise / To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies / One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies / The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

The opposite team could reply with lines from William B. Yeats' Down by the Salley Gardens.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree / But I being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

And so on and so forth.

Sadly, the future generation will most probably not be able to recite a line of poetry, much less a poem — a phenomenon that has permeated all cultures across the globe, sparing none!

If one must come to terms with reality, shouldn't parents and mentors interfere and try to bring in balance to the deteriorating trends that are invading children's minds and culture? Can the educational system be of help, and could it employ better effective measures to help future generations keep upright?

Can reciting poetry be as encouraged as an activity as the other arts at school? Can those in power, and perhaps with money, create a radio station, for example, that will only play the aesthetic and the poetic? Can we come together to find a remedy for the ‘dumbing-down' plague that is sweeping society?

Gibran Khalil Gibran once wrote, "Give me the nay [flute] and sing, for singing is a fine prayer, and the sound of the nay stays even after life has vanished."

Gibran's words were sung by Fairuz and the music was composed by Najib Hankash. Perhaps we can still find a way to revive such poetry and breathe life into it with the voices of the next generation.

Ghada Al Atrash Janbey holds a Master's degree in English and teaches at a college in Abu Dhabi.