the fall of rome

it's been said, and heard by many of us, those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.... or something to that extent. well friends i think that we are (aside from religious beliefs) looking at another sign of the end of the american civilization.

i was listening to studio 360, a program on npr, this last weekend and i heard something that got me thinking about this. let me start out by saying that this didn't really shock me perse, but it made realize that are group of friends is once again an acception to the rule.

the full text of this commentary can be found at this link. but here are some highlights from kurt anderson's piece:

We all saw the recent news stories about the big decline in the percentage of Americans who read fiction or poetry or drama. Back in 1982, a large majority of people said they read a work of literature that year. And now, just two decades later, it's less than half that.

Reading fiction – any kind of fiction, from Jackie Collins to Stephen King to Philip Roth – has officially become a minority taste in America .

What's more, this decline appears to be accelerating – nearly the entire drop occurred in just the last decade.

The new study was undertaken by the National Endowment for the Arts. And Dana Gioia, the clear-eyed poet and former businessman who runs the NEA, says what we are witnessing is “a general collapse in advanced literacy.” He calls it a “national crisis.”

check out the link and read the whole thing. it's scary. in fact here's the scariest thing in there...
The historian and author Kevin Starr was quoted in the New York Times as saying that this glass looked half full to him – nearly 100 million American adults still reading poetry and fiction and drama.

“In an age where we're returning to medieval-like oral culture based on television,” Professor Starr said, “I think that's pretty impressive.”