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Lessons from Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Rating: 9/10
Finished: 08/2018
Get the full index of lessons here
“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think”
Short Summary
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman shows how the most popular media of a time in history shapes the discourse of the world. Written in 1985, it focuses on how television has negatively affected the level of public communication in contemporary America but it’s even more relevant today in the internet era.
Lessons
There are two literary dystopic visions:
- George Orwell, who in “1984” warned about a tyrannical state that would ban information to keep the public powerless
- Aldous Huxley, who in “Brave New World” depicted a population too amused by distractions — entertainment, leisure, and laughter — to realize that they had been made powerless
Postman believes that the communication inspired by television has turned our world into a more Huxleyan one.
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
