THe only thing i have a bit of an idea about that has to do with spreading an idea is about the ideas that bought about the social reforms that made our last century what it was modern with all parts of the poppulation well dressed so you can't often tell the difference between rich and poor in a cruel and humiliating way. That ended the big educational gap between rich and poor, so you did not have village youkels any more.
I know about the propogation of ideas tha tlead to modernity because I was as addicted to reading novels as my son is to
video games and a lot of the victorian novels were dedicated to changing the terrible poverty that existed in europe that had been increased by the industrial revolution and was not reduced by having an empire though people now talk as if the empire had made us rich, as far as my observation serves me it was social help to what had been the underpriveledged and became the less underpriviledged that turned our countries into the efficient modern countries they are today because no information i have about the past leads me to visualize a country that was as rich as the countries with wellfare states have been till now, though in the past the rich were in a very agreable situation having a whole lot of servants for example is great, do you like anmals well if you have people to look after them you can have as many as you want without it being terribly hard work. Frightened of gettiing lonely in onld age, well if you have servants you need never be lonely.
In america you get uncle toms cabin and the
books of Francis Hodgkins Burrnet with their continual references to how awfull poverty is being writen.
I believe that the reforms would never have happened if a lot of peope had not tried to give propoganda to the ideas that lead to reforms. Dickens and Mrs Gaskel in England and Zola in France and a host of people at a pamflete level and lecturing level and lots of different organisations on the job.
I want to say also that when it come to studying things people buy a lot of books on the subject they are interested in. i buy
gardening books because one book has one peice of information another book does nt have, for instance. I bought one book that has a description or two a bit mixed up and hard to unmix, of how to stuff and wrap up a tree to stop the frost getting at it. I did not want any of the other bits of inforamtion in the book or just one other, i just wanted to have in ht ehouse the descrption of bundling up
trees and tying them up.
I like books which are nearly the same thing as another book i already have on a subject. I find it very hard to learn a subject when i dont entirely trust the source and much as my counsciouse mind tells me that a writer is respectable because the book i sthe one the school has bought for us to learn that, or because the writer has a college degree or lots of
experience or what ever, i prefer to read three people writing the same thing, it gives me real confidence tha tmy uncounsciouse mind can accept. So, as i believe that people are pretty similar, though sometimes they are pretty different, mostly not so much in their abilities as in their interests, i believe they
should have lots of accounts of the same thing. I have five books on the ppainter Degas for example. I must admite you can find some cheap books here in Madrid. I was very shocked about how expensive books were in Jamaica.
Another thing is that one style of writing or of illustration will appeal to one person and another to another, so you need lots of books on the same subjesct so tha teveryone is reading about it is you think it is important, so everyone should try to get rid of their inhibitions and let their hair down and compete in the advertising ideas line. agri
rose macaskie.
