Empire Of Illusion

Empire Of Illusion motivates you to watch less TV and get better at reading by outlining the sharp drop in literacy levels in the United States in recent years, the negative effects that have followed, and the dark future ahead if we continue on this path.

Believe it or not, in today’s modern world, illiteracy is actually a growing problem. The author calls it an illiteracy epidemic and says this failure of our education is making us illusion-prone. A shocking one-third of the US population is either completely illiterate or barely literate.

How did we get here? Americans don’t read nearly as much as in previous years. Researchers found that after graduating, one-third of people won’t read another book for the rest of their life!

Aldous Huxley actually eerily foreshadowed this problem in his novel Brave New World when he depicted a highly advanced society in the future that was so obsessed with consuming entertainment that nobody wanted to read.

The main problem with this isn’t that we don’t get any information, the problem is that it may not be the right information because TV is great at distorting reality. Studies have estimated the TV is on for around seven hours a day in the average American household. By the time you’re 65, this means you’ve spent nine years in front of the TV.

We like it because it’s easy to take in presents us with predictable content and familiar cliches. It also gives us the illusion of excitement and comfort while we do nothing with our own lives.

All of this time in front of media puts our democracy at risk. TV is a powerful authority. Those who appear on the screen are validated, while those who aren’t are essentially labeled as insignificant. This drives us to be a society of narcissists who will do anything for illusions of money, fame, or sex appeal instead of the common good. It also perpetuates the idea that we should strive to be on TV. We see this in the fact that the average American is more likely to apply to be on a reality television show than they are to apply at a prestigious university. By doing this, people are essentially lining up to volunteer to live under constant surveillance. This normalizes the fact that we as American citizens are under constant monitoring by not only the government but also big corporations, which often infringe upon our constitutional rights. As if this weren’t bad enough, politicians also use this to their advantage. Modern-day politics are more and more like TV, where they sell smiles and empty slogans instead of real facts and meaningful propositions. They strive to sell the same false…