An Article Revisited
”Empire Of Schlock”
December 2016 editorial
www.ink2quill.com

Years ago one of my students came to me with an article called ”The Empire Of Schlock” and asked me to explain it. (Unfortunately, I can´t find the author´s name)It was an assignment from one of his first year college english courses and he had to write an essay on it.

The article compared two great books George Orwell´s ”1984” and Aldous Huxley´s ”A Brave New World”. It explained that some over-authoritarian societies rule through violence, fear and intimidation while others can rule through bribery, pleasure, addictive drugs and rewards.

In the book ”A Brave New World” the characters live in a completely controlled society that is stratified from birth and an addictive drug (soma) is offered to the people of that society to passify them. The people of the World State are constantly being passified. The people of both societies are miserable and live highly controlled lives. These societies lack freedom and honest governmental bodies or corporations. These are societies have reduced their populations to slavery and ignorance.

Winston Smith´s society controls people through fear while Aldous Huxley´s World State society is seductive but both places keep you in ignorance and rob you of your freedoms.

The writer of the article ”The Empire Of Schlock” discusses another type of state. The state of ”schlock” or BS. This is a brilliant description of the state of our society. We have given nonsense a value and raised that value to an unreasonably high worth.

If ”schlock” were a commodity on the stock market it would outpace gold or oil and would be more valuable in the eyes of business than even water. Yes water. We would have a branch of government called ”The Department of Schlock” and it would be more feared than the IRS, FBI or FCC. It would have a larger building than the Pentagon and a larger budget than the entire defence industry.

But in order to capitalize on this commodity we first have to recognize its existence. What should we do to those that have been keeping it a secret while profiting from it all these years?

I2Q

(Commentary by www.ink2quill.com )

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