Review: Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The problems Neil Postman wrote about in Amusing Ourselves to Death have been exacerbated in the 26 years since its publication. Postman posited that, at least in the western world, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (what we love will ruin us) -- not George Orwell's 1984 (what we hate will ruin us) -- was right.

Everything in our culture "has been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business." This not only affects how we converse and receive information, but how we think, and not in a good way. In short, technology is not neutral; television is destroying us. (Undoubtedly, Postman would say the internet is only making matters worse, if possible, for he begins his attack against the telegraph as having introduced "large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence.")

Postman is not against entertainment (including television) altogether, he is against religion as entertainment. And politics as entertainment. He is against the way in which our image and video based culture has replaced our print-based culture, for the form of the medium -- in moderns times, the pervasive medium of television -- affects the content.

Postman applies his thesis to politics, religions, news, commerce, and education. Think Billy Graham versus George Whitfield. Think about what we call political debates today versus the Lincoln - Douglas debates. "You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content." As a result, "the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense."

Television does this in a number of ways, including stripping away historical context, "ma[king] entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience," and inserting discontinuities that undermine coherence (e.g., a news report about war followed immediately by a report of a celebrity arrest).

If you are reading this book review about a book that promotes the virtues of a print-based culture, you may have already convinced yourself that television does more harm than good. If so, Postman's book will provide further clarity to your conviction. If not, you will never view television (or, frankly, the telegraph or newspapers) the same after reading this book.

The only thing missing from the book is a solution, though Postman is pessimistic that there is one. I share his pessimism, except at the family level.



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