Why is the average person such a pleb with literature, and in general?

inb4 some faggot "wow, my friends read, therefore most people read, you're just a virgin loser, haha"

cause the machines gotta keep running somehow

there is no incentive to support "classics" besides reissuing hardcovers for a premium.

there is, however, incentive to churn out 30-40x pieces of genre fiction for avid consumers, especially if the series can be combo'd into a series of movies. In terms of readership:

Rowling >>> Picoult >> Woolf + Brontë sisters combined > Dickinson

etc etc

What form of economy/socialstructure encourages "classics"?

How might we set up our society to encourage high literature production/consumption?

You must provide sound alternatives if you are going to try to say what we have is not the best option.

The classical period only happened because of the educated and the general population where incredible small. There is of course the precedent of firsts. Only one can be first to climb Everest, first to the north pole. So too there will never be another Shakespeare, nor (shudders) Beatles. Today's literature is thick with commercialism and shows no signs of getting any better. Both the providers and the consumers are being multiplied and dumbed down at the same time. The only alternatives are that it intensifies, getting worse, or capitalism is weakened/ended and it grows more interesting if localized. (The only way it shrinks is if the demographics drop off)

>You must provide sound alternatives if you are going to try to say what we have is not the best option.
The "best option" is wrong in so many ways, least of which for literature. We are all going to die, parboiled, drowned, starved leaded poisoning, cancers, dirty bomb attacks, religious extremists, etc. unless we change this broken stultifying and unsound system we're chugging along with.

Good God, you sound like such a faggot.

People don't read.

Think about the way most people talk about literature. It's usually complaining about how they were "forced" to read books in school.

The average person comes home and flips on the TV.

>Muh capitalism!
>No other valid alternative!!
>SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>The Beatles are awesomes.
They were okay.

Good literature challenges all your preconceived notions. Most people don't want that hassle. They want something simple to read/watch that takes their mind off the bullshit they deal with at work

>The "best option" is wrong in so many ways, least of which for literature. We are all going to die, parboiled, drowned, starved leaded poisoning, cancers, dirty bomb attacks, religious extremists, etc. unless we change this broken stultifying and unsound system we're chugging along with.

I would have written the same thing when I was 16, chill out and don't be so eager to spout your opinions.

If there are no valid alternative then shut the fuck up you whingey baby.

That isn't what he means. Go ba ck to leddit.

>Posts le epin alt-right meme
>Can't read fer shit
>Veeky Forums collectively laughs

PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT BRAINS

Great post

Say something of substance and you'll get better. Otherwise, shut the hell up, can't ya?

"Red pill" for you, friend youtube.com/watch?v=CyFSvnLnCZ0

Capitalism is not at fault. It's working as intended. Readers have a demand for genre-fiction shit, and writers, and to a greater extent publishers supply them.

The demand of readers has to be changed, and not the system (capitalism/modern publishing focusing on business rather than literary values) that provides. To do that, we have to rethink the education system in some countries and replace it with one that encourages reading "high literature" instead of shit to mediocre genre-fiction.

To encourage reading "higher literature", it has to be taught in a way that doesn't instantly alienate the majority of students.
Based on my own education, one of the major problems with teaching literature is the way the curriculum is paced. In my country we "Start with the Greeks". You can't expect 14 year olds with practically zero reading-experience to read Aristotle, Plato, or even just the Homeric epics. It's guaranteed that only 5 or so students will read them at that age out of a hundred. The rest will either give up on reading because "The Greeks write oldy and shite" or won't develop an interest for literature until later in their studies.
We'd be better off starting with relatively easy-to-digest books such as Camus' novels or Dosto's short-stories. It's pleb-tier on Veeky Forums, I know, but most of my classmates loved The catcher in the rye because they could finally get through a book. We should start there, on their level, working our way up instead of killing their will to read before it was even born.

This is all irrelevant ofc. because we elected a right-wing populist 7 years ago and he does everything to destroy future intellectuals, but you catch my drift.

>You must provide sound alternatives if you are going to try to say what we have is not the best option.

>To the question “What should we do?” I can most often truly answer only”, with “I don’t know.” I can only try to analyse rigorously what there is. Here people reproach me: When you practise criticism, you are also obliged to say how one should make it better. To my mind, this is incontrovertibly a bourgeois prejudice. Many times in history it so happened that the very works which pursued purely theoretical goals transformed consciousness, and thereby also social reality.

Are you saying his childish whining is even remotely causing transformed consciousness?

The only thing the commie """thinkers""" have done to combat the modern "1% is overpowered" meme is by inadvertently fueling an Alt-Right Nationalist movement across the western world.

That is the very flaw of their ideology they have a list a hundred miles long of complaints but no concrete solutions to motivate change.

This does not feel like a transformation of our social reality but rather the continuation of the cycle.

>"This is all irrelevant ofc."
I don't like that attitude, but the rest of the post is great analysis. I have high hopes for Trump fixing education or at least opening it up to encourage competition. My mother is a teacher and she has nothing but complaints about how things are run. They also have this new government mandated common core curriculum that no one likes. Hopefully private schools become more viable alternatives and I can send my children to become patricians and not be held back by a bunch of niggers and spics.

It's all relative user. Why, I'm sure compared to some people on this board, you are the pleb

Because "pleb" is literally the word for "person with average tastes/understanding of the medium."

>They also have this new government mandated common core curriculum that no one likes. Hopefully private schools become more viable alternatives and I can send my children to become patricians and not be held back by a bunch of niggers and spics.

That's exactly what the government I'm talking about is trying to achieve, and it fosters antiintellectualism. It would take too long to describe our education system, so let's just say the government is constantly reducing the number of humanities-centric lessons for about 50% of students, favoring PE, religion, ethics and STEM subjects (in trade-focused schools). The quality of history, language and literature lessons is being lowered by enforcing low standards and replacing the curriculae with often propagandistic subjects. Objectivity is no longer up to the law-abiding teacher.

Government spending towards education has been gradually lowered to the point where students and teachers in public schools have to spend their own money so the students have the equipment and funds necessary to learn.

Teachers are required to write reports on their students and fellow teachers. During times of protests, principals are required to name "dissidents". Many teachers retire or look for other jobs thanks to the increasingly authoritarian nature of the school-system. Their replacements come from universities where recruiters for right-wing and pro-government parties are de-facto allowed. If there are replacements of course. We lack teachers. the ones we have are over-worked.

The fields of humanities are diluted by the low standards of entry. The "old" matura required experience as a reader, lexical knowledge of the basics of history and literature, analytic thinking and basic writing skills. The new matura requires nothing but common sense.

Those who want quality education have to enroll in private schools, which are often religious. Increasing the tuition fee to capitalize on the situation has became a trend. They often don't accept students based on ethnicity, regardless of it being illegal. These minorities face nothing but barriers during their education.

This has all begun by centralizing the education system, taking away power from principals, teachers and students. The moving force behind the reforms resembles your thoughts on the subject: Good education is the privilege of the select few, earned by money and as a side-effect, ethnicity. The rest should focus on trades and more "practical" fields, to become electricians, plumbers, mechanincs and the like, limiting the students' control over their education, and as a result, their life.

If the government keeps this up, we'll end up with a society of walking tools, knowing nothing but their trade. The "intellectuals" will be pro-government, rightist people raised by propaganda, coming from wealthy families, chosen by birthright not by ability.

>I don't like that attitude
Neither do I, but I'm not naive enough to think that students (~more than half of whom can't even vote), a couple thousand teachers and a few hundred intellectuals can change the system in a democracy with no oppositon or alternative bar the more authoritarian far-right. I still march and protest alongside thousands, but it's fruitless. Reading people like you, "Patricians", praise such a system just makes me think we've truly lost and there's no hope.

Berenstain?

>Why is the average person such a pleb with literature, and in general?

the irony is that there is nothing more COMMON among teenagers than thinking how "pleb" everyone else is but themselves.

by being assuming and calling whomever pleb and only like-minded folks patrician youre totally oblivious that you're the most common creature out there. and sadly if you're past your teen years and still thinking in terms of pleb and patrician, well that's just sad and pathetic. and the older you are the more pathetic it really is.

>If the government keeps this up, we'll end up with a society of walking tools, knowing nothing but their trade.
...like we already have?
>The "intellectuals" will be pro-government, rightist people raised by propaganda, coming from wealthy families, chosen by birthright not by ability.
lmao what the fuck are you talking about? university educated people are overwhelmingly leftist

its not the best education system but its still better than crab-mentality no-child-left-behind and affirmative action type shit

Yep. Anyone using the term "pleb" has already admitted they have no understanding of other people and would rather live in a grandiose delusion that strokes their weak ego.

If everyone's a patrician, then no one is

if everyone is human, then no one is :o

>...like we already have?

But it's a choice, a decision you can make. You can ignore everything but your trade, but it's on you. With the system I described, students are forced into trades and generally shit education. "When do we start studying history?" "Fug you kid here's a screwdriver"

>lmao what the fuck are you talking about? university educated people are overwhelmingly leftist
Please tell me more about my country and its universities. Leftist ideas have been ran into the ground here.

> better than crab-mentality no-child-left-behind and affirmative action type shit

We never had that.
Streetscum? School's not obligated to allow him past the age of 16. Until then, he can be transfered to schools that are de-facto trashcans for students.
Genuinly stupid student? He can be transferred to a school that caters to his abilities.

There's no "holding other students back" bullshit. The system was able to handle problematic students before the reforms.

>To encourage reading "higher literature", it has to be taught in a way that doesn't instantly alienate the majority of students.

If the majority students have such pathetically sensitive sensibilities that they will disregard an entire genre due to being 'alienated' by their lofty/airy/righteously indignant teacher, then it's their funeral.

Us star-bellied sneeches gotta stick together; am I right?

>But it's a choice, a decision you can make. You can ignore everything but your trade, but it's on you. With the system I described, students are forced into trades and generally shit education. "When do we start studying history?" "Fug you kid here's a screwdriver"
are we both talking about the United States? because our education system is exactly what you described. it isn't a matter of "choice", if you aren't wealthy and you don't have parents that teach you to be curious and want to learn independently, you're fucked. you can't just up and "decide" to be smart.

>Please tell me more about my country and its universities. Leftist ideas have been ran into the ground here.
I assumed we were talking about the US, my bad. where are you from?

A better question than OP's: who cares?

Ayn Rand "Comprachicos".
I know, i know, meme author