> 80% of books bought on Amazon.com are gifts, meaning most of the books bought there go unread

> 30% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives after graduation

80 percent of American families did not buy/read a book last year at all

70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years

Most of this reading is reading someone's conceptual thoughts about junk, or entertainment reading that gives no self-improvement. There is a place for that, for sure, but the immensity of the reading that leads to nothing vs. the reading that leads to something is astounding. Staggering.

As to TV viewing, Americans spend an average of 4 hours/daily in front of the TV and 3 hours listening to the radio…

And you wonder why no one succeeds in cultivation. They haven't even heard of the path, let alone investigated it.

Most cultivators who are successful that I know have large libraries. Most rich people whom I know have large libraries - of self-improvement books.

If you wanrt to cultivate, you HAVE TO READ. All the best materials to familiarize yourself with the path are in books and inaccesible any other way. The Bible alone is not enough as it lacks the tremendous content of cultivation knowledge you need to succeed on the path. The Stage of Study and Wisdom accumulation absolutely requires you to know what the path is, whow to cultivate it, what are the stages, what is gong-fu to be expected, what are deviations and so forth. You can only find this information if you read widely.

Now I've come across some statistics that should give you concern. This is of vital strategic, national interest — not what people NORMALLY think is a strategic issue: