under a consumerist morality

I've been learning of late that most people are not comfortable with being presented with a series of phenomenological facts for interpretation. It makes them feel bewildered, and unsure. Most people do not have the wildness of heart to digest poetry or prose in this form. What they need is to be taken by the hand, and led though various propositions as to what they should think.

There is another aspect to readership, that must be reckoned with. Most people prefer either to be flattered by what they are reading, with the content of the writing seeming to obliquely refer to them or their "type", giving them wholeness and personality through the character of the protagonist (although perhaps in the reader such complexity of character is missing.) If they cannot feel flattered, they rejoice in being put in a position of judge over the protagonist. From a superior position of knowledge (historical hindsight, or a formulaic and rigid morality), they are able to judge the knowledge and actions of the protagonist as less than adequate. Thus the reader once again rulez.

None of this is particularly mature or even "natural". But is is the state of things under a consumerist morality.