In recent inquiries we have been looking at the formation of a different type of ‘readership’. This is explicitly to serve and enable the paradigm of apithology as applied to humanity learning. Rather than the writing needing to fit ‘reader interests’ (in their myriad forms within a declining literacy), the text needs to fit its fulfilment of purpose.
This would be a shift from ‘reader interest’ to ‘readerful resonance’ – within a premise of a developing generative humanity capacity. The location of the literacy moves from the person to humanity. Yes, we are talking about a ‘humanity literacy’.
This is not the familiarity of people ordinarily with the humanities, this is humanity itself as a learner and its literacy in engaging in heuristic forms for generative humanity learning. The field is wide open, because we are not even considering it’s possible.
In the past, education recognised that different types of reading, and different types of writing, change and train our neurology in capacities for different types of proficient holding. Medical students read medical texts. Engineering students learn paradigm exemplars of equations. Literature majors read at least one poem that entices and befuddles. Working within Spec-Lit challenges our world making. The more we read ‘as’, the better we get ‘for’. This seems fair!
Similarly, those learning apithology learn the basics of thinking within a generativist ontology. The forms represent generative formations. Their engagement does something to cognition’s entrainment. We get better at being better – not at human betterment; at humanity inquiry for the self-enablement of collective nurturance.
In a changing literacy landscape, I am not sure I have the skillset to write a timeless classic for abbreviation immediately by a (large or small) language model that has no somatic memory. The ‘time’ of relevance is instantaneous. The ‘interpretation’ is based in variance. The ‘mind’ is drawn from scraped human knowings, into something that is (by definition) ‘not’ human (any longer). The mistake in calling these models ‘generative’ is to miss their designed nature; as being ‘generating of’ imitations of human conceptions and viable personage.
The question that presents now is: If (well) reception of humanity learning essentialisations cannot be assumed for every person’s conception, do you change the concepts or change the instruction?
The question is complex, because the asking is nuanced. The implications for future human knowing are significant. I could simplify it. On this occasion, I won’t. Stay with the technicality for a moment. It’s worth it!
To answer this question, one of the sub-disciplines of apithology theory is called ‘apiphrenia’. This is the obscure discipline that examines the history of the appreciation and deprecation of meaningfulness in a document or doctrine – based on the construction of the conceptions interpreting it. To put it more simply: it is how mind changes canonical form historically.
The word comes from the Greek root ‘phrēn’ (i.e. as in frenetic, phrenology, schizophrenia, etc.) – which refers, less to the mind (nous) and more to the (lit.) ‘mid-rift’ or chest cavity (as the centre of embodied knowing). It is more about holding, than it is about finding. It is the location of knowing by life-spirit (thūmos) – as a bodily passion.
While usually reserved for major texts, in apithogogy principles the dynamics of interpretation in apiphrenia can apply to a simple concept or form which changes generatively – and in the horizon of deprecation; almost immediately it is taught publicly.
If you are teaching, writing, or talking professionally, and not noticing that 85% of participants are not getting more than 64% of the material, this probably does not concern you. We hope you are being paid (well) for those attending and also personally rewarded by their (ostensible) reception. It is all about the audience and what they can ‘take away as being theirs’ personally. This is distributive, not generative. This is why we ‘grade on a curve’ not ‘graduate on apical apexes’ (nb: or more precisely, ‘apices’).
This effect is why instruction in apithology, in particular for the purposes of humanity nurturance using humanity inquiry, is moving dramatically – away from increasing availability towards resonance with humanity somatics. Identification with the individual mind that extracts, contributes ever less to the space that attracts.
Solution: We don’t change the concepts (that will be naturally changed by their reception) – we change the form and mode of instruction. Humanity learning requires a literacy just as ordinary learning requires a pedagogy.
There is a new nomenclature around this (that has only taken a decade to define and refine). It relates less to readiness, receptivity, aptitude or adeptitude ~ and more specifically a maturity in generative development; from initiating resonance to arrival into ‘sonance’.
This feature of generative learning within humanity inquiry, will be the next direction for our ongoing inquiry.
willvarey (2026)