The Fight Against Zombie Culture: the New Feudalism, Revisited
Why the humanities matter now more than ever
As literacy declines and home ownership grows increasingly out of reach, are we moving towards a new kind of feudal society?
That is the question I posed to readers in one of my earliest essays for The Crossroads Gazette. In it, I explored the historical development of mass literacy alongside our current literacy crisis, in which two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States cannot read with proficiency. As reading scores decline in the U.S. and around the world, I observed how this trend coincides with the increased presence of private equity and hedge funds in the housing market—creating the ominous potential that one’s landlord could one day be an investor, if not owner, of one’s place of employment.
I’m deeply passionate about the subject of literacy, especially as it relates to the devaluation of the humanities as a whole. It’s a multi-pronged issue, with causes ranging from screen addition to poo…