[Vision2020] America the Illiterate

[keely emerinemix]

Thanks, Kenneth, for showing us this.

It's become increasingly clear to me, and more so after reading this article, that the greatest danger the United States faces is from ignorance within, not from terrorism outside.   It's ignorance that feeds racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and xenophobia, and poverty results when those who have power manipulate to keep those who don't in a continued downward spiral.  Further, if "ignorance" as it relates to the poor means only a lack of understanding, education, and power, then ignorance and poverty will bring this nation down far more than even the most sophisticated nuclear, biochemical, and conventional attacks.

The "ignorance" -- better, powerlessness -- of the poor has numerous roots; the ignorance -- better, stupidity -- of those who enjoy a degree of affluence and security does, too.  The difference is that with a willingness to plunge into shallowness and vapidity comes enormous accountability of an individual and corporate nature that God will not overlook.  If churches equipped and encouraged people, all people, to learn and to discern and then to plunge into a world of complexities, there would be a tremendous improvement.

On the other hand, it's just sooooo much easier to stick to the hot-button simplicity of "Adam and Steve" and Presidents-elect sharing a milkshake with Bill Ayers . . . 

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/




> Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:55:42 -0800
> From: kmmos1 at verizon.net
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] America the Illiterate
> 
> TruthDig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines: America the Illiterate
> 
> By Chris Hedges
> 
> We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a 
> print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the 
> intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which 
> constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This 
> America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has 
> severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot 
> differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish 
> narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and 
> self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than 
> rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split 
> the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. 
> 
> There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school 
> diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or 
> fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or 
> barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a 
> year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into 
> this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 
> percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. 
> Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a 
> book.
> 
> The remainder of this story may be read at:
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081110_america_the_illiterate/
> 
> 
> Ken
> 
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