Inspired (and slightly alarmed) by my recent forays into rediscovering childhood literature, and the insidious programming that lurked within the seemingly innocent pages, I decided to take a further perambulation down memory lane, by rediscovering the tomes of my teenage years.

Having gone through the requisite Judy Blume stage (and she probably deserves a deep dive of her own), in my mid-teens, I moved onto something a little more highbrow...

Chick lit.

I didn't know that was what it was called at the time, but perusing the publications on offer at Chorlton bookshop, with my birthday book tokens (hey, remember them?), a vivid purple tome caught my eye (I didn't know then about the sinister connotations that colour can have, if only I had...).

It was called "Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married", and when I read the back cover, it foretold of the exciting adventures of three twenty-something singletons, living it up in London, and the uproarious high-jinks they got up to, following the thrilling prophecy from a fortune teller that one of them was about to get married.

When you are a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, the prospect of twenty-something single London life sounds like the last word in glamour and sophistication, so I bought the book and eagerly began devouring it.

It was, I thought, exceptionally well-written, with the characters and storylines so vivid and enveloping, that it fairly transfixed me. In fact, it would not be too much to say that I was enamoured. The eponymous Lucy seemed so quirky and cool, her fashionable friends so funny and likeable.

I rushed home from school every day to read another chapter, I recommended it to all my friends, and I felt something akin to bereavement when it finished. At which point, I promptly went back to the beginning and read it all again.

In fact, I loved it so much that, on the last day of school, when everyone else was bringing in notebooks for classmates to sign with goodbye messages, I brought "Lucy Sullivan" in instead, and asked people to sign around the publishing insignia on the blank-ish front pages.

Sadly, said tome was subsequently lost in the mayhem of multiple house moves, but I always remembered it fondly, and so, last week, decided to re-read it online.

I didn't expect to like it as much as I had at the age of fifteen (and it would have been rather concerning if I had), but nor did I expect to be quite so horrified by it that, upon completion, I felt immediately compelled to vigorously engage in some wholesome Family Ties brain-bleaching to recalibrate my rather bruised and battered psyche.

What I remembered was an exuberant tome about three young, fun housemates, negotiating the early adult challenges of establishing a career and securing a relationship, all against the exciting backdrop of glittering London. Falling out of bars, meeting wacky people, swapping clothes and outrageous stories, it all sounded tremendously impressive and exciting at the time, especially when compared to double Maths and Neighbours, the average day in the life of the fifteen-year-old I was when I first read it.

When I re-read it last week, that is not what I read at all.

Instead, I read an account of a severely psychologically unwell protagonist, grappling with intense bouts of suicidal depression, who endures a stultifying dead-end job in order that she can finance the enormous quantities of alcohol necessary to make this lifestyle just about bearable. Her flatmates - and more or less everyone she knows - are living identical lives, exacerbated by a tendency to bring home strange men, who they are so revolted by in the sober light of day, that they spend hours in scalding showers, scrubbing themselves raw in repulsion.

This is all presented to us as being very witty and humorous (in one memorable scene, our protagonist is looking for a brillo pad to clean a saucepan with, only to be told, "we haven't got any, Charlotte used them all on herself after sleeping with that Danish bloke").

Our, er, "heroine", Lucy, not only has an awful job and string of disastrous relationships, but she also has crippling mental health problems, and no actual interests to speak of, beyond being depressed and drunk. Her entire existence is simply a hamster's wheel of getting drunk at the weekends and binging on junk food and loser men, feeling awful on Mondays, returning to her detested job, and then desperately counting down the days to the weekend, so she can do it all again.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the book is following Lucy's journey through denial and realisation, as she comes to terms with the fact that her beloved father is an alcoholic, and realising it's her dysfunctional relationship with him that is to blame for her dysfunctional relationships with men in general. Once the penny drops for her in this regard, towards the end of the book, she stops going for unsuitable men, meets the man of her dreams, he proposes, and then the book ends.

But upon re-reading it, it seemed to me that this "alcoholic dad" storyline was really just a subplot, tacked on rather unconvincingly to give the book a bit more depth and meaning to disguise what its true purpose was.

That true purpose was, I believe - much like the purpose of the wildly popular sitcom, Friends, which came out around the same time - to sell dire, destructive lives of despair to young people as normal, desirable, and aspirational.

Objectively, the lives of Lucy, her flatmates, and all their friends, are diabolical. They live bleak and empty subsistences, doing dead-end jobs they hate, having unstable - and often downright traumatic - relationships, and without any binding glue of family, community, or even religion to sustain them. They don't even particularly like each other. It's an apocalyptic wasteland of nihilism and hedonism (not that any of them realistically seem to be enjoying themselves very much) with a fair bit of mental illness thrown into the mix.

Crap job, crap relationship, no money, depression, and an eating disorder: that's what this "aspirational" bestselling novel of the 1990s was setting up young people to expect, as was the TV show Friends - as the theme song went, "your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA (dead on arrival)".

However, the big difference with Friends was that it was a TV show, which first of all meant - at that time at least - that one was only exposed to it for half-an-hour a week, and secondly, when you see actors and sets on a screen, all the work's been done for you. You don't have to do the psychological labour of imagining what characters look like, what they sound like, and all the scenery around them, which readers of books typically do, very vividly.

The reason, therefore, that people often complain "the film isn't as good as the book" is often not so much an objective observation on quality, as it is an expression of the discordance one feels when what one sees on the screen is so different to what one had imagined in one's mind (I was outraged when they made Lucy Sullivan into a TV series and Lucy looked nothing - nothing! - like she was supposed to).

Because so much more effort goes into reading - and because, back in the pre-internet days, there were strict limits to how much of the same show you could watch at once - I am going to make the contentious claim that, for children and adolescents, reading may not only be more powerful than watching, but potentially more damaging, as well.

I know, I know, but please just bear with me... I have a case to make here, and it involves an insidious long-game ruling class plot (as most societal staples apparently seem to).

I watched a lot of TV growing up, the way kids do, and, like everyone else, enjoyed Friends and Frasier on a Friday night, Gladiators and Blind Date on Saturdays, and Neighbours and Home and Away every weekday (twice, if you were lucky enough to be ill and off school).

However, my recollection of all of these offerings is ultimately pretty vague. While I recall the big names and major storylines, my involvement was - as a passive viewer - rather remote.

Conversely, the role one plays as a young reader, and conjuror of mental images, settings, and sounds, is so much more active, and, as such, penetrates a lot more deeply into one's psyche, in ways I am coming to realise are not always in our interests.

We all know that spending too much time in front of a screen is bad. Whether it's TV, video games, Twitter, or Netflix, the social consensus is unequivocal that sitting on your own in a room staring at a screen is bad, including and especially for children and adolescents. They shouldn't be cooped up inside all day, they should be getting out into the world and interacting with other people.

We even recognise this with work - many parents of young adults are wringing their hands that, whilst their offspring are gainfully employed and bringing in money, they are, in the WFH era, nevertheless sitting in a room alone all day staring at a screen, and we know this simply isn't good for people - young ones in particular.

Somehow, though, this all goes out the window if - instead of sitting alone in a darkened room staring at a screen - they are staring at a page, instead.

If they're reading, well, that's completely different! Reading is a highly noble and virtuous activity which could not possibly damage them in any way, and could only have positive and beneficial effects.

It's so beneficial, in fact, that the world's ruling classes have invested enormous amounts of time and money in universal literacy programmes, dragging children (sometimes at gunpoint) into schools so they can be taught to read. What's more, these very same elitists have constructed millions of libraries all over the world where children can consume as many books as they like, at absolutely no cost. Meanwhile, innumerable programmes exist all around the world - some headed by global superstars like Dolly Parton - to ensure children have access to plenty of free books.

Evaluating the above paragraph through the eyes of a conspiracist suggests that aggressive pushes for worldwide literacy might not be so completely benevolent, after all.

It is of note that, for the vast majority of human history, most people were completely illiterate. Until relatively recently, literacy was primarily a skill of the elite, such as aristocrats and priests, and they guarded it fiercely. As recently as 1820, only around 12% of the entire world's population was literate.

By 2022, that number had soared to 87%, with most of Western Europe currently reporting literacy rates of around 99% or higher.

So what are the real reasons behind this change? Why did the ruling classes abruptly shift from restricting literacy to a privilege of the elite, to aggressively foisting it on everyone?

Whatever fluffy rhetoric this change was dressed up in, regarding liberation and empowerment and so on, the reality is, as the well-worn phrase goes, "nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them".

Or, as conspiracy theorist, Henry Makow, puts it: whenever the ruling classes do anything, there are always two reasons for it: 1) the reason given to the public to make it palatable, and 2) the real reason.

Obviously, if global literacy was in any way a threat to the ruling elite's hegemony, there is no chance they would have pursued its achievement so aggressively, pouring such a colossal amount of resources into - not just ensuring that children can read - but that they excessively do, as reading is not simply encouraged or incentivised, but, not infrequently, positively deified - worshipped and revered, seen as one of the most virtuous and enriching activities a child could possibly be undertaking.

As someone who spent vast quantities of time in my childhood and adolescence with my nose in a book, I now find this increasingly sinister, and that is especially so upon revisiting the books I read then, as an adult with an adult's brain.

When you are a child, teenager, and young person under the age of 25, your cerebral cortex - the faculty that enables higher and critical thinking - is not fully developed. That means you lack a fully-formed ability to analyse and meaningfully critique what you are reading, Instead, you are far more likely to simply absorb and accept it as accurate. The further below 25 you are, the more impressionable and "sponge-like" you are in this regard.

When you are an adult, however (especially once you're over 30, when your cerebral cortex is completely mature - note that MK Ultra programming often breaks down around this age), you can cast a sceptical eye over what you read, see where you might be being programmed or propagandised and respond accordingly.

As a child and adolescent, you overwhelmingly cannot.

In other words, and as recent article put it: "adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part."

This means it is infinitely easier to "hack" the brain of an adolescent, who is operating primarily from their emotions, than that of an adult, who is far more likely to to operating from a place of reason.

We know that all successful propaganda works by targeting the emotions, rather than the intellect, and therefore, propaganda is going to be especially effective on a group of people who are predominantly emotionally driven and are not yet able to operate mature reason and judgement.

This, in my opinion, is the real reason global elites pushed for worldwide literacy starting from early childhood: because children, as emotion-led beings, are far more susceptible to emotion-based propaganda: and reading, because of its unique ability to get inside a child's powerful imagination and make them conjure up people and scenarios themselves, is a far more powerful propaganda device - specifically for those who cerebral cortexes have yet to develop - than other forms of communication.

Few children are enduringly affected by, for instance, things teachers say to them - most of us had a single "really good teacher" if we were lucky, but can barely remember any contributions from the rest of them - whereas the memories of beloved books can deeply linger for a lifetime. Equally, even TV shows don't tend to resonate quite as deeply as books do - not at those most formative ages. The way people talk about the books they loved as children is completely different - far more reverential and romanticised - than the way they talk about their favourite TV shows.

And crucially, the elitist history of literacy means books have been able to retain some of the benefits of their previously aristocratic privilege. Because for so long, the ability to read was something restricted to the upper echelons of society, we as a population still reserve a certain level of reverence for books and reading, the sense that there's something very special about this activity which deserves unique respect. There's often very little accompanying emphasis on what is being read, or how much time is being spent reading, there's simply an enduring belief that reading and books are so special, so sacred, even, that to read anything is a uniform good, and the more, the better.

We would never think of TV and film this way. We recognise a huge distinction between good films and terrible ones; between age appropriate offerings and themes that are unsuitable, and that - even for brilliant, inspiring, appropriate programming - there should still be a strict limit on how much youngsters are exposed to.

We instinctively recognise that it's not a good idea for a child or adolescent to spend ten hours a day in their room watching TV - even brilliant, inspiring TV.

Yet hours upon hours spent reading - often no matter what the book is, because "at least they're reading" - is seen as admirable and aspirational. Something to encourage and applaud. Boast about, even.

And whilst nobody responsible would think of letting a child purchase an '18' film, there are no such restrictions on books, and any child of any age can walk into a bookshop or library and come away with whatever they want.

Should I have been reading 'Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married' at the age of 15? Probably not, as it was clearly aimed at adults in their twenties and thirties. The author was 33 (ooh er...) when it was published, with the protagonist and all the main characters in their mid-to-late twenties. That's what the author would likely say to me were she to read my essay: "but the book wasn't meant for you. It obviously wasn't written for schoolchildren and I didn't mean for them to read it".

But there was absolutely nothing stopping me (or any child of any age) reading it, as there are no age restrictions on books. On the contrary - if anything, people often congratulate youngsters who read books that are meant for older people.

This flies in the face of how we approach all other attempts of adolescents to partake in adult behaviour. There are robust laws prohibiting 15-year-olds from smoking, drinking, having sex, getting married, driving a car, joining the army, and a host of other things. It is completely immaterial whether the 15-year-old is judged by themselves or others to be "mature for their age". The law is age-based, not "maturity based", and a teenager would be laughed off the premises if they went into the local off-licence for a few Hooches, and, when questioned on their age, declared, "15, but I'm very mature for my age".

Of course, teenagers can break the law, and many do (the secret to successful underage drinking, I discovered, is not to buy obvious things like Hooch, but dry white wine, preferably French and with an unpronounceable name, along with a pot of olives and copy of the Guardian) - but the point is the laws exist as a societal reflection and acknowledgement that adolescents are not adults, and need to have some protective societal provisions extended to stop them from engaging in adult activity before they are ready.

The reason we have age-based consent laws is precisely because the brain of an adolescent is not yet fully developed, and so they're not able to exercise mature judgement. We recognise this almost universally - but somehow, it completely goes out the window when it comes to books, which, I suggest, can have a far more powerful and enduring effect on the developing teenage mind that a couple of bottles of contraband alcopop (and I'm sure frequent consumption of the Guardian was far more damaging to me than any alcohol I might have bought with it...).

So the question is, why do we as a society try - not always entirely successfully, but we do try - to stop underage children from engaging in adult behaviours regarding a whole host of other things, but make no such attempts when it comes to books?

I realise that's probably a highly contentious, inflammatory, downright blasphemous (in many middle-class circles) question, but I'm serious - is it helpful for society to so ardently encourage children to read, with very few (if any) restrictions on what they read, and does lots of childhood reading necessarily lead to those children growing up into the best versions of themselves?

If it does, then why are the evil, rapacious, child-maiming war-mongers who constitute our ruling classes such dedicated devotees of extensive childhood reading?

Some of the most well-known advocates of fluent childhood literacy include: Laura Bush (wife of George), Oprah Winfrey (famous friend of Jeffrey Epstein and various other terrible people), and, er, Dolly Parton.

If early and widespread literacy is so great, why are all these people so prolifically promoting it?

My rule of thumb is generally: if the elites make it cheap and widely available, it's bad for you; if it's free, it's really bad for you (and if it's mandated, it's positively lethal).

Is reading bad for you? The question may sound ludicrous, but there's sturdy evidence that too much of it can be.

For instance, it's known that too much reading in childhood can impair optimal eyesight development, as children spend too much time focusing on a page close to their face, rather than playing outside and training their eyes to focus on objects in the distance. Perhaps that is why the stereotype of a child who likes to read a lot, is also one who wears glasses.

Not only that, but spending lots of time reading in childhood has traditionally been associated with invalids or those that are in some other way impaired: that children who are unable or unwilling to participate in the real childhood business of getting outside and playing, instead languish inside with books. Indeed, so-called "hyperlexia" - where children show an early and obsessive interest in letters and words - can be a symptom of autism (and it can also be a trauma response, associated with childhood CPTSD).

I suggest, then, that over the past century, as more and more children have endured the kind of early neurological injury from vaccination that leads to various shades of so-called "neurodivergence" - Asperger's, autism, social anxiety - more and more of them have shied away from the natural, intended childhood experience of plenty of fresh air, sunlight, and play, and instead, have retreated further into themselves, alone in their room with a book.

Or that is to say, alone with the elite social programmers who wrote the book, and are now burrowing themselves deeply inside the child's mind - and that is the critical point.

A child experiencing a more traditional childhood, which predominantly consisted of spending time with family and friends, playing indoor and outdoor games, going to clubs and activities, and so on, is simply far less vulnerable to insidious ruling class propaganda than a child whose favoured preoccupation is to read. Children are going to be programmed by something - they are like sponges, absorbing everything around them as they build their character and personality - so the battle is, whether the programmers are to be the child's own family and other local community influences, or the global ruling elite who publish and make available the well-known books that children typically read.

Everyone arrives at adulthood with a lot of assumptions and expectations, regarding jobs, relationships, money, religion, and more, all based on the kind of programming they received growing up. Programming may come from parents, teachers, peers, or TV, and it does: but for the voracious childhood reader, it often comes most powerfully from books.

I look at the books I was reading as a child and adolescent, and can see, with a rather acute sense of dismay, all the deeply unhelpful attitudes and expectations I arrived at adulthood with, courtesy of what was presented to me by books - books that I had not the cognitive capacities (since no child or adolescent does) to properly analyse and understand (and even books aimed at primary-aged children can have some deeply inappropriate and adult themes).

I can easily see why it was so helpful for the ruling classes to have me reading these books at such impressionable ages, why they made books so unrestricted and easily available - and how they could not have installed these ideas so powerfully in my mind by having a parent or teacher tell them to me, or even by putting them on a half-hour weekly TV show. It had to be via books, that I could consume for hours and hours a day, and where I could conjure up the images and scenarios with vivid, indelible clarity myself.

In what is perhaps one of the most powerful forms of predictive programming, a love of reading can mean we then go on to- often completely unconsciously - recreate what we know from beloved books: what feels familiar, recognisable, and therefore "right".

'Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married' is about a single twenty-six year old who moves to London, lives in a flat-share with friends, has a dull job, spends a lot of time in pubs, and often feels a sense of hopeless "is this all there is" despair. She is completely disconnected from a wider cultural, communal, or family life.

That's a pretty accurate description of what my life was like at 26, more than a decade after I had read the book. It's a pretty accurate description of the lives of everyone I knew at the time, as well.

"That's just normal," many may admonish. "That's just what life is like in your twenties."

Is it?

It hasn't been for the whole of human history, up until the very, very recent past. As recently as the 1980s, it wasn't the expected, aspirational norm, as I reminded myself when I binged Family Ties to cleanse from my mind the remnants of Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Sectioned (as it might more accurately have been called - indeed, the author's next book was about a suicidal drug addict getting institutionalised).

In Family Ties - the big American hit show that preceded Friends - the parents met and married whilst at college, having their first baby at 22. Neither was suffering from mental illness or substance abuse issues, they both had good jobs, and a stable, functional family life with a decent standard of living. They were also well connected to, and integrated with, their local community, knowing their neighbours and other local families.

There was nothing particularly glamorous or dazzling about Family Ties, the family weren't wildly well-off or outlandishly privileged, and that was the point: it was supposed to depict a normal everyfamily, with the kind of life that any ordinary person could hope to achieve, with a modest degree of hard work.

That's why Family Ties had to abruptly end in 1989: because by then, these kind of modest expectations - decent job, stable relationship, a house and kids - were no longer what the ruling classes wanted young people to either aspire to or expect.

So Family Ties was swiftly replaced with Friends, where instead of having an enduring relationship, enough money, and stable employment, "your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA".

Vehicles like Friends were necessary to, in marketing-speak, "manage the expectations" of the up-and-coming generation. Immense social shifts took place during the second half of the 20th Century, and the first lot of changes were a fairly easy sell. People were convinced throughout the 1960s to cast off the allegedly oppressive shackles of family, tradition, and religion, and pursue exciting lives of travel, education, and independence, instead.

It was, unsurprisingly, rather easy to convince the average youngster that "free love" was preferable to lifelong marriage; that college and a career trumped smalltown life and the family business, and that there was more to life than what their parents had. When the West was awash with money and opportunity, these changes seemed at first to be working reasonably well. Liberated women were thrilled to be out of the house enjoying an independent life, rather than stuck at home doing laundry. Their male contemporaries were hugely relieved not to have to marry the first girl they dated, able to pursue their own dreams before settling down.

But these changes only really delivered a positive return for a single generation. By the time the children of the Baby Boomers were approaching adulthood, the economic and cultural climate had radically shifted. Young adults were no longer heroically throwing off the shackles of oppression to pursue exciting, meaningful lives on their own terms, as their parents had, but rather, this generation was one of the few in history to be actively - and quite dramatically - downwardly mobile. Not just in economic or materialist terms - it's not merely that they had worse jobs or less money - but in all terms.

Whilst their parents were typically married homeowners by 30, the Friends generation were typically single and flat-sharing; whilst their university-educated parents had quickly found graduate employment, their similarly educated offspring were stuck in dead-end jobs; and while their parents had often been politically, culturally, and even spiritually active, interests for the next generation had often dwindled into nothing more than TV and parties. Mental illness and substance abuse had also soared.

That's what Friends came along to reflect and reinforce: the kind of empty, broken lives young adults had to expect and accept, but to see them as shiny, glamorous, and fun, because - without sophisticated propagandist vehicles like Friends to convince young people this kind of lifestyle was normal, acceptable, and aspirational - a whole generation might just have realised how much society had collectively given up, and in exchange for so little.

However, when TV programming only aired for half-an-hour a week, as was the case for Friends over its ten-year run, the propaganda is not going to be effective enough to manipulate an entire generation.

Enter: books.

Before we had Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime, terrestrial TV couldn't provide the kind of enveloping, all-encompassing propaganda that was needed to fully and comprehensively corrupt the youth.

Now that we have 24-hour streaming services, with no restrictions on the amount of programming that can be consumed at any one time, literacy rates are starting to wane and the ruling classes appear curiously (or not) unconcerned about it. Quietly and with very little fanfare, the culture of reading and books is being dismantled, as there is no longer "that one big book that everyone's reading" (as there was in the days of The Curious Incident... and back when a new Nick Hornby was a major event). As for book tokens, that most tantalising addition to an otherwise-dull birthday card, they're positively anachronistic (please locate your nearest Gen Z representative and ask if they've ever heard of them).

There was such an emphasis on books and reading until very recently, because, until very recently, the only way the ruling classes could effectively get into the minds of the young and impressionable, completely free from parental interference, and for hours and hours around the clock, was via books.

So, that's what they did. Aggressively and relentlessly over many decades, with worldwide literacy programmes pursued with a very similar maniacal zeal to worldwide vaccination programmes (and perhaps for some very similar, or at least complementary, reasons).

We all know it's no good for children, teenagers, or human beings in general to be sitting alone in a room all day staring at a screen.

I postulate that, in reality, it often isn't much better to be staring at a page.

That obviously doesn't mean there isn't a place for screentime or reading (especially once your cerebral cortex has developed and you have become immune to the 'charms' of chick lit). Needless to say, as a writer, I'm rather fond of the written word (and, alas, of backlit screens also, which I find much easier to read from than books).

Rather, it means that these things should not take such extraordinary precedence over what human beings - especially young ones - are really built for, which is be out in the world and around other people.

The bottom line is that the ruling classes are not threatened by people sitting alone and reading. If they were, they wouldn't have ensured 99% of the West is literate, whilst installing libraries and other free book programmes all over the world. And in the age of the internet, it's easier than ever to order whatever reading material you like, straight to your door.

We know what the ruling classes are threatened by, though.

We saw it vividly during "Covid".

They are threatened by people getting out of the house and being around each other. They are threatened by independent small business. They are threatened by the development of the kind of skills and communal bonds that genuinely do make people empowered and liberated.

Note that no government school or free state programme teaches children hot to grow food, make clothes, build houses, construct furniture, or start a business. They don't teach how to hunt or fish or sew. They don't teach how to change a plug, fix a car, mend a bike.

They do teach how to read, though. They make damned sure they teach that, and that really should tell us a great deal.

And while one might reasonably object, "yes, but it's about what children read, and no school is recommending such puerile rubbish as Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married", a collective shudder may ensue when I solemnly report that, when I was in Year 10 (fourth form / ninth grade), my previously highly-revered English teacher told us that, if we got book tokens for Christmas, we should all rush out and buy Bridget Jones' Diary.

Upon her trusted recommendation, I did just that.

I didn't get past the first few pages.

I was horrified. I hated it.

So maybe, just maybe, I had a tendril of functioning cerebral cortex even back then...

Either that, or the "brillo pad scene" had ruined chick lit for me for good...

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