The Unreality Industry: The Deliberate Manufacturing of Falsehood and What It is Doing to Our Lives

A ``collision course with reality'' caused by our inability to grasp the complexities of the post-WW II world has created a fantasy industry designed to provide escape from domestic and global problems, according to this important, hard-hitting study by two professors of business administration at UCLA. This billion-dollar industry, they charge, injects entertainment into every aspect of life, blurring the boundaries between fact and fantasy. Indicting TV as a major villain, Mitroff and Bennis argue that long-range thinking on vital ethical issues has been replaced with repetitious, comforting platitudes that erode society's moral fabric. A need for quick solutions, and a national belief in indefinite material progress, the authors maintain, lead people to confuse bigness with strength, quality for quantity, and celebrity for the leadership that is needed to restore a national vision. (Aug.)