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My own Blind Spot is related to literacy. I believe we are living in a post-literate society and it bothers me somewhat. It seems there are few people who know how to read and write beyond basic comprehension.
Book consumption has shifted to a largely best seller model, and many best sellers are poorly (okay, unexceptionally) written. It is becoming increasingly difficult for books that matter (e.g. in fiction, novels that don't lead the reader through a relatively safe story and aren't closed-ended and neat) to be financially viable as the marketing machines of big publishers cater to a finicky and distracted reading public. With indirect competition from movies, music, Internet, etc, what's a reader to do?
Is good literature dying from a fatal distraction, or am I just having trouble weeding through the mess?
Should I be looking upon commuters with scorn just because they're reading the Da Vinci Code or Sophie Kinsella or any pastel-coloured book or any book entitled as such: The [A] and/or [B]'s [C]?
A: Time, Bee, Memory, My, Her, etc.
B: Keeper, Sister, Daughter, Wife, Traveller, Senator, etc.
C: Wife, Daughter, Sister, Keeper, etc.
Am I being too harsh? Is this my Blind Spot?
"Potboilers" are nothing new, but are they more pervasive?
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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