Anton Bruckner
Puritan Board Professor
On Radio and TV (4 Ratings) 10-Apr-07 Here's a fact that is so absurd you don't know whether to laugh or cry: Nearly 40% of households surveyed making less than $30,000 a year believe they are in the top 10% of Americans when it comes to income! In a similar, though more extreme national delusion, millions of North Koreans eating wild grass soup during the winter under Kim Jong-Il, believe they live in the richest nation on earth, and that America wants to attack them out of jealousy. Such are the results of successful propaganda.
In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville noted that there was scarcely a plowman in America who did not have a book or a broadsheet newspaper fastened between the handles of his plow so that he could read as he tediously trod the rows of earth turned by his prairie cutter plows. It was a time when books were expensive and hard to get, yet they were widely shared and much discussed by Americans of all classes.
Today, I am told by book marketers that about half of all American households never buy a book in any given year. And of those books which are sold, about one half are about celebrities, entertainment or sports or other subjects directly related to, or learned about through television and similar forms of media. That leaves about 25% of the households in the market for other types of books, whether they be fiction, romance novels, politics, philosophy, self-help, history or perhaps (god forbid) subjects requiring critical thinking.
And as for the news, which is now classified under the entertainment divisions of network television, even liberals seldom exert much more effort than conservatives. Surveys show that 77% of all persons under 35 defining themselves as "liberals" say The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is their primary news source. Which probably makes Jon Stewart happy as hell but doesn't bode well for what little remains of our republic.
Yet, as recently as 40 years ago most Americans gained their knowledge base from text. From reading books. Which requires concentration, attention and involvement. But today, when most Americans read, they read in television, not text. Meaning that we process the information in the fleeting symbology and empty shorthand clichés of television. Our consciousness has been thoroughly modified by the injection of images straight into our brain stems, bypassing the critical thinking process. Consequently, our sense of reality as a nation and individuals is now interpreted and defined in those pre-selected manufactured images, even when presented in text.
The result is that very few Americans are critical thinkers. Most Americans suffer from a collective learning disability based on the complete commoditization of our consciousness by consumerism and electronic media. I call it a learning disability, which it is. But it's also a polite way of saying that, as a nation, we have become collectively as stupid as a sack of hammers.
Americans are so conditioned to rote consumption and substituting entertainment and illusion for actual involvement and experience that it feels completely normal. And so, even when hit square in the face with evidence that the world extends beyond the shopping mall and their own suburban cul de sac or apartment, they have no critical thinking tools to deal with it. Beyond that, least half of us are so conditioned we are incapable of human or political insight at all. The election of George Bush proved that.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/04/jo...
In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville noted that there was scarcely a plowman in America who did not have a book or a broadsheet newspaper fastened between the handles of his plow so that he could read as he tediously trod the rows of earth turned by his prairie cutter plows. It was a time when books were expensive and hard to get, yet they were widely shared and much discussed by Americans of all classes.
Today, I am told by book marketers that about half of all American households never buy a book in any given year. And of those books which are sold, about one half are about celebrities, entertainment or sports or other subjects directly related to, or learned about through television and similar forms of media. That leaves about 25% of the households in the market for other types of books, whether they be fiction, romance novels, politics, philosophy, self-help, history or perhaps (god forbid) subjects requiring critical thinking.
And as for the news, which is now classified under the entertainment divisions of network television, even liberals seldom exert much more effort than conservatives. Surveys show that 77% of all persons under 35 defining themselves as "liberals" say The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is their primary news source. Which probably makes Jon Stewart happy as hell but doesn't bode well for what little remains of our republic.
Yet, as recently as 40 years ago most Americans gained their knowledge base from text. From reading books. Which requires concentration, attention and involvement. But today, when most Americans read, they read in television, not text. Meaning that we process the information in the fleeting symbology and empty shorthand clichés of television. Our consciousness has been thoroughly modified by the injection of images straight into our brain stems, bypassing the critical thinking process. Consequently, our sense of reality as a nation and individuals is now interpreted and defined in those pre-selected manufactured images, even when presented in text.
The result is that very few Americans are critical thinkers. Most Americans suffer from a collective learning disability based on the complete commoditization of our consciousness by consumerism and electronic media. I call it a learning disability, which it is. But it's also a polite way of saying that, as a nation, we have become collectively as stupid as a sack of hammers.
Americans are so conditioned to rote consumption and substituting entertainment and illusion for actual involvement and experience that it feels completely normal. And so, even when hit square in the face with evidence that the world extends beyond the shopping mall and their own suburban cul de sac or apartment, they have no critical thinking tools to deal with it. Beyond that, least half of us are so conditioned we are incapable of human or political insight at all. The election of George Bush proved that.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/04/jo...
