We have a literacy rate above 90 per cent of the population. We have radio, television, movies, a newspaper a day for everybody. But instead of giving us the best of past and present literature and music, these media of communication, supplemented by advertising, fill the minds of men with the cheapest trash, lacking any sense of reality, with sadistic phantasies which a halfway-cultured person would be embarassed to entertain even once in a while. But while the mind of everybody, young and old, is thus poisoned, we go blissfully to see to it that no “immorality” occurs on the screen. Any suggestion that government should finance the production of movies and radio programs which would enlighten and improve the minds of our people would be met again with indignation and accusations in the name of freedom and idealism.
Eric Fromm, quoted by Oliver James in The Selfish Capitalist. (via errorgorilla) (via johnbrissenden)
- The example evidenced above of the perceived problem of a largely literate society choosing the ignore the premier works of the past and present day, as chosen by the elite in the field to whom the neophytes find their opinion useful, and instead what fills the major airwaves for public consumption, is surface, lowest common denominator, corn-filled-shit-in-a-hole covered by the leaves and mud of advertising (that last metaphor should go the other way aorund.)