Our literary tradition-- who will care, a millenium from now?

In Brit Lit yesterday, I got to musing about what, really, will be left of our culture when we are long gone. We're reading Beowulf excerpts, and I posed the question to the kids: why are we even still reading this? I mean, other than you have a teacher who thinks it's pretty great and I'm making you?

They hit on all the "right" answers, things about cultural heritage and a cool monster/hero story. But I pressed the question: why? Why this? Why the Odyssey and the Iliad? 

And what are we leaving to history? 

And will anyone be able to read it? 

With the over-reliance on digital technology, will anyone a thousand years from now be able to access our ideas? And will they even be worth it? Who are our cultural storytellers? What is our story?

I know, too many questions to ponder this early in the day. But they are ones that dwell in my head, and I drag them out into the light probably more than I should. I am a poet, a writer, a person who treasures the written word and who values the idea that everything is connected, stretching back from this little blog post all the way back to the mists of time. In some way, my questions are the same ones that I suspect Homer was puzzling over, that the author of Gilgamesh was trying to nail down, that Stephen King hammers away at. 

What have we got to say for ourselves? And who will care? 

A lot to think about.

C