Every once in a while I read a book that I just can’t recommend highly enough. I just finished one of those books: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman. This has been one of those books that I always saw reference, it was in my “to read” pile for a looooooooooong time, and when I finally did read it, kicked myself for not reading sooner. Published in 1985, Postman begins by arguing that it was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World which proved to be more prophetic than George Orwell’s 1984. Postman notes that “Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacity to think.” Postman’s primary thesis is that television is just such a technology. Postman is not arguing that an oppressive government is using television to “undo our capacity to think,” but that, our capacity is being undone nonetheless. He argues that we cannot separate the message from the medium, and that we are (or have become) “a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment.” Tracing the development of television as a hybrid of the telegraph and the photograph, Postman argues that television’s primary format is simply entertainment; television is the overwhelming medium of our culture and thus, we are gradually “Amusing Ourselves To Death,” losing the capacity to think critically while being entertained into oblivion. Postman deftly examines the influence of television on politics, religion, learning, “news” and a variety of other issues, deftly showing how each area has been transformed into “show business” by the influence of television. While this may not strike anyone as anything to write an entire book on, Postman lucidly demonstrates how this transformation has also robbed many of the capacity to think critically in a logical, linear, “print-based” manner. Television is actually transforming the way Americans interact with reality. Postman forcefully shows that “television does not extend or amplify literate culture. It attacks it.” In other words, television and literacy are simply not compatible. Tracing this argument, he uses the example of Sesame Street. Postman argues that “There could not have been a safer bet when it began in 1969 than that ‘Sesame Street’ would be embraced by children, parents and educators.” Postman explains:

“Children loved it because they were raised on television commercials, which they intuitively knew were the most carefully crafted entertainments on television. To those who had not yet been to school, even to those who had just started, the idea of being taught by a series of commercials did not seem peculiar. And that television should entertain them was taken as a matter of course.”

Of course, the basic premise is that Sesame Street prepared children for school. That’s why it receives public and government funding. However, as Postman notes, “We now know that ‘Sesame Street’ encourages children to love school only if school is like ‘Sesame Street.’ Which is to say, we now know that ‘Sesame Street’ undermines what the traditional idea of schooling represents.” Elsewhere, Postman argues that the very format of news-programs undermine the fact that they are attempting to communicate serious truth (a task he argues television is opposed to). He points out that the commonly used phrase “Now …this” is “a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and is not to be taken seriously.” He goes on to argue that:

“There is no murder so brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so costly - for that matter, no ball score so tantalizing or weather report so threatening - that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying, ‘Now … this.’ The newscaster means that you have thought long enough on the previous matter (approximately forty-five seconds), that you must not be morbidly preoccupied with it (let us say, for ninety seconds), and that you must now give your attention to another fragment of news or a commercial.”

Drawing once again on Huxley, Postman warns that:

“There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Postman’s analysis is startling in its portrayal of a culture that is slowly numbing itself to death with entertainment, a culture that strikingly resembles our own. Read Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman. Read the Wikipedia entry on Neil Postman. Visit Neil Postman Online and read interviews, articles and essays by Postman. Read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Read 1984 by George Orwell.