Our local library always has a special display of light reading for summer, which I examine with interest. I certainly can’t argue with the adjective “light.” Some of these books are so lacking in substance that you half expect them to drift off the shelves and out the library window. The general assumption seems to be that a little sunshine boils our brains away, so that only the lightest of light entertainment can be tolerated.
As far as I remember the passion for “light” really took off in the 1970s with foodstuffs. All of a sudden “light” products – often spelled L-I-T-E due to the inadequate schooling of food industry PR people – began appearing on the supermarket shelves. Fat was removed from meat, caffeine from coffee, alcohol from beer, and almost everything from milk which was and is labeled as containing 1% or 2% milk, or no milk at all, as if this was an advantage. More and more products were promoted for what they didn’t contain. We were offered sugarless cookies, sausages without pork, eggs without yolks, bread without wheat, chocolates without chocolate, and much, much less. The twentieth century has already brought us music without music, novels without plots, and poems without rhyme or meter.
All this was no doubt very profitable, and even amusing in a perverse way. But Lite has expanded into an epidemic. Now it's almost universally accepted that less is more, especially when it means less responsibility, less commitment, less pain, or less work.
For example, we have created education Lite. This is vividly demonstrated by the constant arguments over test standards in schools. Whenever flabby grading standards – designed to make students happy – are replaced by serious ones, designed to teach them something, parents are outraged and boycott the tests. On the same principle that “the easier the better” some medical schools are admitting prospective doctors without subjecting them to the hard slog of pre-med. Learning science is hard but, personally, I would rather have a doctor who knows some organic chemistry than one who can quote Shakespeare, although both would be nice. In the family realm we have Marriage Lite in the form of cohabitation, and Divorce Lite in the form of no-fault. Religion Lite has also proved extremely popular. It punishes no sins, and promises health, wealth and happiness in exchange for no sacrifice and no discipline at all. You can’t beat that.
And nobody has embraced the doctrine of Lite thinking more enthusiastically than politicians, who are now fully committed to the doctrine of Truth Lite.
In this brave new world of Lite all the nasty and unattractive ingredients are magically deleted. We can eat without getting fat, drink without getting drunk, gain without losing, and have youth without age. We will have science-free doctors, education-free graduates, and milk-free milk. With luck we can look forward to pay days without work, elections without voting, boom without bust, and summer without winter. This liberating trend clearly has a long way still to go.
Copyright: David Bouchier
