Whatever happened to rhetoric?

[Kia ora]

I meant "literacy" more in the broader sense of being tied to a rich literary and cultural tradition, rather than simply "knowing how to read."  "Literacy" actually wasn't quite the word I was looking for, but I couldn't find the right word.

And it wasn't really all that long ago when most people in our country (even unbelievers) knew the Bible and such as part of our shared cultural heritage.  We've lost a lot of that now.  And even people who couldn't read for the most part heard the Bible read aloud on a regular basis, and maybe even memorized many of its passages.  There was a much richer shared oral tradition.

And perhaps many fewer people could read and write in the days of Shakespeare, but could anyone today come close to his literary achievement or richness of language?  Now, even many educated people talk largely in grunted obscenities.

So it's not surprising that the art of rhetoric is largely lost.

While I somewhat agree with you, I also wonder if it's not due to the rosey-coloured goggles we have of the past, like how everything back then was the Golden Age and we're just slowly degenerating from that.