Reading Comprehension

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal
literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities:
the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did
not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our
5 Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast
mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither
with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more
or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take
into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

10 In the past most people never got a chance of fully
satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions,
but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but
once a year, feasts were "solemn and rare," there were few
readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach
15 to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where
the performances, though infrequent, were somewhat monotonous.
For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing
we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept
in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of
20 entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights,
from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts
to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome
there was nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided
by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the
25 cinema. In Brave New World non-stop distractions of the most
fascinating nature (the feelies, orgy-porgy, centrifugal
bumblepuppy) are deliberately used as instruments of policy,
for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much
attention to the realities of the social and political
30 situation. The other world of religion is different from
the other world of entertainment; but they resemble one
another in being most decidedly "not of this world." Both
are distractions and, if lived in too continuously, both
can become, in Marx's phrase, "the opium of the people"
35 and so a threat to freedom. Only the vigilant can maintain
their liberties, and only those who are constantly and
intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves
effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of
whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the
40 spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but
somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and
soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find
it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would
manipulate and control it.

45 In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most
part on repetition, suppression and rationalization - the
repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as
true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored,
the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be
50 used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art
and science of manipulation come to be better understood,
the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine
these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in
the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of
55 irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the
maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of
democratic institutions.

1. The author would be most likely to agree that propaganda

A. can serve a vital function in democracy
B. is concerned mainly with the irrelevant
C. is now combined with entertainment
D. is universally recognized as a danger
E. needs constant vigilance to avoid

2. The "early advocates of universal literacy" (line 1) are mentioned as

A. advocates of propaganda
B. opponents of an idea that the author thinks is correct
C. proponents of an idea that the author wishes to counter
D. people who made wrong predictions about freedom of the press
E. social commentators unaware of man's appetite for distractions

3. The author refers to "Brave New World" as a fictional example of a society in which

A. non-stop distractions are the main instrument of government policy
B. people are totally unaware of political realities
C. entertainment is used to keep people from full awareness of social realities
D. entertainment resembles religion in its effects on the masses
E. non-stop entertainment is provided as it was in Rome

4. By "intelligently on the spot" (line 37) the author apparently means

A. alert to the dangers of propaganda
B. in a particular society at a particular time
C. in a specific time and place
D. conscious of political and social realities
E. deeply aware of current trend

IMO:
1 - B
2 - A
3 - C
4 - D

please post the OA.

The correct answers are:

1- A
2- C
3- C
4- D

Thanks