Amusing Ourselves to Death: Revisted - Part 1

Since my eyes first fell on Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death,  they were glued  to every page until they had their fill.  That was then, this is now; and now, approximately 10 years later, I’m re-reading this provocative and prophetic book.  An now, just as then, I find this book to be indispensable to those interested in the renewal of our culture.

Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death  in 1985; it has been 17 years since, and our society seems to be changing more rapidly than ever.   In spite of all the changes since 1985, his insights remain ever-fresh.   Though some may see Postman’s work as an intellectual elitist or high-brow rant against TV, they couldn’t be more mistaken.  Nuanced and humble, Postman poignantly analyzes our culture.  I offer this as my first post in a series of posts, essentially my comments and notes on this re-entry into the mind of a great cultural critic and prophet.  I hope my commentary provides some hope in this “Brave New World” we find ourselves in.  Above all I hope you buy this book and read it more than once!

Part 1:  A Reflection on Ch.1 and 2.

Orwell was wrong, Huxley was right. 
This is essentially Postman’s foreward to the book.  In a very interesting contrast of 1984 and Brave New World, Postman explains that the two books are two different prophecies.  Orwell’s vision was one with and all-powerful Big Brother, dominating the culture by brainwashing and dehumanization, whereas, in Huxley’s, the culture dehumanized itself through mass entertainment, love of sex and drugs, and the wasting of life through triviality.  In Postman’s words, “Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.  Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance” (vii).  Writing in 1985, one year after 1984, the world saw that Orwell was wrong; Postman saw that Huxley was right in essentials.  It does not seem, though the potential exists, that external force or power will destroy our culture, but it does seem, and frighteningly at that, that we are now in the process of destroying ourselves from the inside – we are Amusing Ourselves to Death.  For more on a specific application of this knowledge to life, see Mother Moved by Grace, the article entitled "Facebook? Not Any More".

In the first two chapters, entitled, “The Medium is the Message” and “Media as Epistemology”, Postman lays out his assumptions, premises and purposes.  The phrase, “The Medium is the Message”, which was coined by Marshall McLuhan, is the key to understanding the whole book.  This phrase can be hard to understand, but once grasped it opens new worlds of insight into communication, language, and media.  I want to breakdown the phrase into two parts: the “medium” and the “message.”  What Postman means by “medium” is the form of communication.  For example, oral, printed words, or images.  By “message”, Postman means, not a concrete and specific statement, but  a metaphor; but not just a metaphor, as we learn in school as, a figure of speech that suggests one thing is another through a comparison, rather he means culture-shaping metaphors.  An example of one today is the computer.  The computer, and the way we interact with it, is shaping our understanding of the world, our language, our view of ourselves.  Just zoom out a bit on that and double-click it!  As Postman says in another book I recommend, Technopoly, we now speak of humans as machines, with our brains as processing information, and our computers as living organisms that “get viruses” or “give me the news”.  That could be a bit dense, but another way of saying “The Medium is the Message” is  that  different forms of communication favor different kinds of content.  I will talk about this in Part 2: a Reflection on Ch.3-5.  

Now, so far I’ve tried to offer the key phrase and its meaning in a few brush strokes.  Assuming a working understanding that different forms of communication (oral, print, image) favor different kinds of content, I’d like to discuss, essentially HOW they “favor” different kinds of content.  By “favor”, Postman means that print, as a form of communication, is biased to logical, rational, sequential, and propositional content; whereas, say, TV as a form of communication is biased or favors pictures, impressions, emotional resonance, and non-propositional language such as slogans and one-liners. This is essentially what Postman’s title of chapter 2, “Media as Epistemology” means.  Epistemology being the study of the nature, purpose, and limits of knowledge, Postman is saying that our media, dominated by television (in 1985) and computers, offers powerful metaphors and WAYS of knowing.  

It is important to see Postman is not just speaking in terms of the individual.  He’s not warning individuals to “beware of the media as a shaping influence in the way you think!”  Instead, he’s interested, and the rest of the book he spells this out, in how the media is shaping our entire culture.  “Our languages are our metaphors. Our metaphors are our media. Our metaphors create the content of our culture” (15). His basic premise is that television as a medium produces a society who communicates by entertainment.  Entertainment is the metaphor for almost every area of cultural discussion or thought today: from politics to religion, from education to children’s stories.  But our “media-metaphors”  do not favor rational and reflective thought, or as NT Wright would say, “delayed gratification”.  Television (and the image-dominated medium of communication that has exploded since 1985), or mass entertainment, symbolized by the city of Las Vegas, encapsulates our culture’s aspirations and is leading to its death bed.  

To demonstrate the power of a form of communication on an entire culture, Postman hearkens back to early American history to examine a culture that was dominated by the printed word.  Compare the Age of Las Vegas today, to the Age of Boston then and think about the kind of culture that produced these epochs. It is to this topic I leave to Part 2 of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Revisited, but then again, don’t’ rely on my comments, purchase this book and savor every delectablebite to the nourishment of your soul and the renaissance of our culture.

+Viva Christo Rey!